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ORIGINAL: LadyConstanze
Even if he would have said ex felons, as somebody coming from an academic background, 3 states aren't nearly enough to make such a claim, I mean come on, you wouldn't really want to take medication that has been checked on such a narrow margin...

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The six-month election recount that turned former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota's Twin Cities.

That's the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.

The final recount vote in the race, determined six months after Election Day, showed Franken beat Coleman by 312 votes -- fewer votes than the number of felons whose illegal ballots were counted, according to Minnesota Majority's newly released study, which matched publicly available conviction lists with voting records.

Furthermore, the report charges that efforts to get state and federal authorities to act on its findings have been "stonewalled."

"We aren't trying to change the result of the last election. That legally can't be done," said Dan McGrath, Minnesota Majority's executive director. "We are just trying to make sure the integrity of the next election isn't compromised."

He said his group was largely ignored when it turned over a list of hundreds of names to prosecutors in two of the state's largest counties, Ramsey and Hennepin, where fraud seemed to be the greatest.

"What we did this time is irrefutable," McGrath said. "We took the voting lists and matched them with conviction lists and then went back to the records and found the roster lists, where voters sign in before walking to the voting booth, and matched them by hand.

"The only way we can be wrong is if someone with the same first, middle and last names, same year of birth as the felon, and living in the same community, has voted. And that isn't very likely."

The report said that in Hennepin County, which in includes Minneapolis, 899 suspected felons had been matched on the county's voting records, and the review showed 289 voters were conclusively matched to felon records. The report says only three people in the county have been charged with voter fraud so far.

But the report got a far different review in Ramsey County, which contains St. Paul. Phil Carruthers of the Ramsey County attorney's office said his agency had taken the charges "very seriously" and found that the Minnesota Majority "had done a good job in their review."

The report says that in Ramsey, 460 names on voting records were matched with felon lists, and a further review found 52 were conclusive matches.

Carruthers said Ramsey County is still investigating all the names and has asked that more investigators be hired to complete the process. "So far we have charged 28 people with felonies, have 17 more under review and have 182 cases still open," he said. "And there is a good chance we may match or even exceed their numbers."

McGrath says the report shows that more still has to be done.

"Prosecutors have to act more swiftly in prosecuting cases from the 2008 election to deter fraud in the future," he said, "and the state has to make sure that existing system, that flags convicted felons so voting officials can challenge them at the ballot, is effective. In 90 percent of the cases we looked at, the felons weren't flagged."

"If the state had done that," he said, "things might be very different today."

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ORIGINAL: bounty44


interesting your bringing up medication (apart from comparing apples and evening wear)---clinical research into the effectiveness of medication is often isolated to university/research hospitals in relatively few areas. it counts on what I just said---people here are the same as people there.

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail

Yeah, fuckin faux asswipe. I am here in Minnesota and Norm fucking Coleman was dead meat, and there was every form of fucking voter fraud made that could be had to get Coleman numbers, but he puked anyhow. Typically inept nutsuckers.

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx


ORIGINAL: BamaD

True in most states but the Dems are fighting to get them the vote.
If they can't vote why were Dems registering people who were in prison but would be out in time for the next election?

Why do you think they should not be able to vote? They are usa citizens are they not?

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ORIGINAL: LadyConstanze

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx


ORIGINAL: BamaD

True in most states but the Dems are fighting to get them the vote.
If they can't vote why were Dems registering people who were in prison but would be out in time for the next election?

Why do you think they should not be able to vote? They are usa citizens are they not?

It isn't, being a felon, in some states, or a non-citizen can keep you from voting.
Both of those, and several other things, can keep you from LEGALLY owning a firearm.
Consider me puzzled, how come it can be so much easier to purchase a gun than get a voter ID? Is voting considered so much more dangerous and deadly?

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ORIGINAL: jlf1961
The overwhelming majority of conservatives are anti abortion

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keep women barefoot and pregnant

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arm all private citizens with machine gun spouting lunatics.

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And overwhelmingly wealthy....

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The violent-crime rate (number/100,000) varies greatly among the states in the United States. (See table at end for 1996 rates.)

An interesting question to ask is: Is there any correlation between the violent-crime rate and the strength of the two political parties in the states?

I compared different state's violent-crime rate (VCR) data for 1996 with the results of the 1996 presidential election for each state. (See table at end for votes in the 1996 election.) A correlation calculation yielded the following:

Correlation Rate
Democrat vote +0.160
Republican vote +0.044

That is, the Democratic votes for the states had a 16% positive correlation with increasing VCR and the Republican votes had a 4% positive correlation. States with high violent-crime rate vote more Democratic than Republican and vice versa.

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A while back, the Bay Area Center for Voting Research enumerated the most conservative and the most liberal cities in the United States.

They did this by studying the 2004 presidential choice of American cities. All the ballots for George W. Bush were regarded a conservative response and all the ballots for John F. Kerry were regarded as a liberal response. The ballots for the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party were regarded as conservative and the ballots for the Green Party , Peace and Freedom Party, and Ralph Nader were regarded as liberal.

The cities that had the most conservative ballots were weighed in as conservative and the cities that had the most liberal ballots were weighed in as liberal. The conservative and liberal cities were compared for their rates of violent crime. The national average for violent crime is four crimes per 1,000 inhabitants. Of the top fifteen liberal cities, two cities have six times the violent crime rate than the national average. Twelve cities of the top fifteen, have double or more rates of violent crimes . Each city has a higher rate of violent crime than the national average.

Of the top fifteen conservative cities, eight cities have a violent crime rate matching or below the national average. There are only two cities that have double the violent crime rate as the national average. Cities that have lots of violent crime are prone to vote for the Democratic Party while cities with less violent crime are prone to vote Republican.

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ORIGINAL: LadyConstanze

And again, the way the prison system is run in the US, are you surprised that people who come out of it tend to want something slightly more humane and less profit driven?

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ORIGINAL: Hillwilliam

Most criminals don't vote because they're lazy, irresponsible fucks.

Therefore, the answer is "they're neither Democrat nor Republican."