AdamT
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Hey, how about that! Governor Rick Scott has got his man: an Austrian-born Canadian gun afficianado. Out of the 180,000 "suspicious" Floridians scrutizined in the state's purge of voter rolls, ONE person has been recommended for prosecution in connection with voter fraud. Would a photo ID law have prevented this Canadian from voting? I suspect not, as he's also being charged with buying two guns from licensed firearms dealers, and lying on his application for a concealed carry permit. The former requires photo ID and the latter even requires finger printing!
So it appears that these photo ID laws will prevent thousands of legitimate citizens from casting ballots, in order to snare ONE Canadian guy who probably would have voted anyway with the ID laws in place. So why are we doing this again? Florida's former Republican Party chairman has an idea....
Greer -- not the most trustorthy source of all time, but he was testifying under oath....
TALLAHASSEE -- As the debate continues over whether or not to purge Florida’s voting rolls of potential non-citizens before the November elections, at least one person faces possible time in prison for voting illegally in 2008.Josef Sever, 52, a Canadian citizen born in Austria, pleaded guilty Thursday to illegally voting in the November 4, 2008, presidential election as a non-U.S. citizen, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He also pleaded guilty to obtaining a firearms license by falsely claiming he was a U.S. citizen.
Sever, who lives in Plantation, faces up to five years in prison for the voting and gun-related offenses. Though his case offers evidence that immigrant voter fraud does exist in Florida, it is the only such case that has been investigated by state law enforcement this year.
“Sever stated that he was not a U.S. citizen and admitted that he had registered and voted in at least two U.S. presidential elections despite not being a U.S. citizen,” court documents show.
In court, Sever admitted that four different times, between 2007 and 2010, he bought firearms from a licensed dealer in Hialeah while claiming U.S. citizenship. He repeated the U.S. citizenship claim in 2010 when he renewed his Florida concealed weapons and firearm permit.
In early 2008, Sever registered to vote in Broward County, again stating he was a U.S. citizen and voted in the November 4, 2008, presidential election. He registered with “no party affiliation” on March 8, 2008. The statute of limitation for the federal offense of so-called “alien voting” is five years.
According to court records, Sever’s illegal voting was discovered during Gov. Rick Scott’s controversial push to identify potential non-citizens on voting rolls using information from the state motor vehicle agency. Though the Department of State amassed a list of 180,000 potential non-citizens registered to vote, it only sent one name —Sever’s — to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate criminally.
FDLE says it is currently investigating six total cases of voter fraud in a state of more than 11 million voters. Lawmakers, citing a widespread voter fraud problem, passed several measures to change voting processes last year. Critics bashed the changes — including a crackdown on voter registration drives and shortened early voting — as “voter suppression” and federal judges have blocked many of them.
So it appears that these photo ID laws will prevent thousands of legitimate citizens from casting ballots, in order to snare ONE Canadian guy who probably would have voted anyway with the ID laws in place. So why are we doing this again? Florida's former Republican Party chairman has an idea....
In the debate over new laws meant to curb voter fraud in places like Florida, Democrats always charge that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote of liberal voting blocs like blacks and young people, while Republicans just laugh at such ludicrous and offensive accusations. That is, every Republican except for Florida’s former Republican Party chairman Jim Greer, who, scorned by his party and in deep legal trouble, blew the lid off what he claims was a systemic effort to suppress the black vote. In a 630-page deposition recorded over two days in late May, Greer, who is on trial for corruption charges, unloaded a litany of charges against the “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” in his party, including the effort to suppress the black vote.
Fla. Republican: We wanted to suppress black votes - Salon.com
Greer -- not the most trustorthy source of all time, but he was testifying under oath....