What would you think if a candidate were allowed to orchestrate the transportation of thousands of voters to go state to state to state.. and vote in each primary. Each person casting a vote in Iowa, Wyoming, New Hampshire, etc...?

Voter fraud, right? Nope, not technically. States each have their own registration process for the primaries and many have no residency requirement and many allow you to register on election day.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781452.html

This AP article explains in more detail.

ABC News: Ease of Iowa, N.H. Voting Raises Eyebrows

So how much of this is really happening? Certainly it would be easy to get away with as each state primary is run as an independent entity and there is no reconciliation of voters between states.

Some states would not allow this to happen. My state of Illinois, for example has a 30 day residence requirement. So I can only vote once here and know that I am just voting alongside my fellow Illinoisans. But on the flipside, I could have gone to Iowa, put down the address of the hotel I was staying in and registered for the caucuses. Then I could have gone to New Hampshire on Monday and put down the address of my hotel explaining that I was going to move there permanently soon. Then I cast my NH ballot. and so on and so on.

Tell me this isn't a gigantic loophole in the primary process. Tell me that the candidates would not exploit this loophole.

I know better... the only question is who is abusing it and to what extent?

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Screw Change!! Let's have a Seamless Transition of Power and Policy.. John McSame in 2008!

What I don't understand is WHY MSM, the Clintons and bloggers are not taking note that VIA THE HAND COUNT, Senator Obama actually won NH. The discrepency is amazing. When MSM tries to examine what went wrong, they should also take note that the actual hand count of ALL votes, show Sen. Obama clearly won NH, yet they play into fawning over "the comeback kid" mantra and dismiss the accomplishment of Senator Obama yet Sen. Obama came out of NH with the very same number of delegates as Clinton and is ahead in the delegate count.

But the deep entrenchment of the Clinton's with the party Elite of NH will not allow the State of New Hampshire to re-examine the results and go by the hand count which is more accurate than these machines that were responsible for uncounted votes in the previous Presidential election. This issue needs to be addressed.

I wish there had been a way of crosschecking the election results so that people can be saved from feeling very badly about one of the most sacred democratic processes in America.

I'm not sure I'd go that far. The actual vote tally is not under protest from what I understand. This thread is not about a recount, it's about a loophole that bascially allows people to vote in multiple states if they want to or if they are motivated to do so as part of a campaign.

I just see this loophole as something that any campaign could take advantage of. But even though it is allowed because of each state's voting rules, if there was evidence that a candidate were abusing the loophole by identifying individuals who voted in more than one primary, America would likely reject that candidate and they would be ruined.

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Screw Change!! Let's have a Seamless Transition of Power and Policy.. John McSame in 2008!

It's two things that keep this from being a problem.
One is the cost of transporting people from state to state, feeding them, providing them with hotel rooms, etc.
That's a lot of money to spend for a vote, and a fortune to spend to get even a thousand votes this way.

Second, if you did this, you'd involve so many people that it would be all over the news and the negative effect of the story would cost you far more than the few votes you wangled this way.
Let's imagine that a person on a candidates staff did this and got caught, the one extra vote in the primary, would cost thousands of votes in the next primary.

Voter Fraud is about as close to a myth as it gets. Since 2000, less than 100 people have been convicted of voter fraud, it's just not taht big and it never was. The FBI investigated all those Republican charges of massive voter fraud in Chicago and elsewhere during the Kennedy Nixon election, and found no evidence of any massive fraud.
There is no evidence that the results of any election in US history has ever been changed by voter fraud.
Election Fraud is different, in that it's carried out by officials, and there is evidence that elections have been swayed by official actions.

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“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine.”

Senator Thad Cochran, Mississippi (R)
on McCain

“I decided I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.”
Senator Pete Domenici, New Mexico (R)
on McCain

“My anger did not help my campaign ... People don’t like angry candidates very much.”

McCain on McCain

I don't know about those reasons preventing it from happening...

1) On transportation of the voter from state to state, those costs may be covered by the voters themselves. Of every candidates campaign, there are many volunteers that might gladly drive to a neighboring state to boost the vote total.

2) On the visibility of such an orchestration.... Again, if these people are volunteers or if they are simply showing up to rally's collecting meal tickets, while paying for their own travel and lodging, there is no direct money trail that links them to the campaign.

I think because the loophole is wide open, that it is happening. Investigative reporting is really about the only thing that might bring this to light. All that really needs to be done is to compare voting registrations between states. Likely that is confidential information so the simplest way to check it can't really be done.

I don't think of this as a whacked out conspiracy theory that can easily be dismissed. I see it as a loophole. Just as in tax law, loopholes that exist will be exploited.

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Screw Change!! Let's have a Seamless Transition of Power and Policy.. John McSame in 2008!