This weekend, Jerry Mitchell at the Clarion Ledger did an article about Voter ID and it featured former Secretary of State Dick Molpus. Notwithstanding the fact that Molpus hasn’t served in public office for over 16 years, Mitchell gleefully highlighted Molpus’ views about Voter ID as expertly held. It seems like the Clarion Ledger actually had to go back in time to find someone who believed that voter fraud wasn’t real.
During his dozen years in office through 1996, Molpus saw more than 13 million votes cast in the 62 elections his office supervised.
Out of the more than 13 million votes cast, “we had zero complaints that would have been prevented by a voter ID law,” he wrote.
Interestingly, Mitchell didn’t mention the several instances of voter fraud in Mississippi just in the last few years.
1. Terrance Watts was convicted in 2011 of impersonating a registered voter via absentee ballot. He was a convicted felon.
2. In 2009, 3 people in Benton County were convicted of vote buying. That probably doesn’t get stopped by Voter ID, but those who claim that voter fraud doesn’t occur, just don’t know what they’re talking about.
3. Probably the most notable case of voter fraud happened in Tunica in 2011. Lessadora Sowers received 10 concurrent 5 year sentences after being convicted by a jury of absentee ballot fraud. In addition to voting for 6 live people, she also voted for 4 dead people.
As if that weren’t enough, the arbiter of the Department of Justice’s stance against Mississippi’s Voter ID law (none other than AG Eric Holder) just got a wake up call of sorts. James O’Keefe, who did the ACORN expose in 2010 showed how easy it was to walk into a polling place on election day, pretend to be Eric Holder, and have Holder’s ballot offered to him.
If history’s any guide, you’ll be seeing a lot more about O’Keefe in the coming weeks as they will drag this out into the news cycle bit by bit.
And if this first snippet is any guide, those opposing Voter ID’s full enactment in Mississippi better start creating some videos of their own.
Magnolia Tribune
