Republican Voter Fraud

It has been very well established by now that "voter fraud" is a myth rather than a problem, and that all of the restrictive measures enacted by Republican state legislatures around the country are nothing more than not so sophisticated efforts at voter suppression. Some of their less media-savvy members have been caught on tape admitting as much.

Unfortunately I don't know how much some stories are covered, if at all, by the mainstream media, so I don't know what is already old news by the time it gets to Brazil. Perhaps everyone already knows that Liz Cheney's husband, Phillip Perry, while registering to vote in Wyoming, signed an oath stating that he is not already registered to vote anywhere else, although in fact he is registered to vote in Virginia, where he lives. (Hell, it's where Liz has lived for years and will live once again if she loses in Wyoming.)

As everyone reading this knows, this story is an embarrassment that tends to highlight Liz Cheney's carpetbagger status in Wyoming, but it's not really an example of voter fraud. There is no reason to think Perry ever intended to vote in both states. Most likely he never even considered the fact that he would need to sign such an oath in Wyoming. (I am quite sure that I have never had to do so in all of my moves around the country.) Then, when confronted with the oath, the realization that he had no intent to vote in both states probably, in his mind, justified his signing it. Probably he made a trip to Wyoming for no other reason than to register and, crap!, who wants to do that a second time? Maybe it even crossed his mind to go back and un-register in Virginia.

Who knows? But imagine that Republicans stumbled across a story of some minority voter (it's always a minority with them) registered as a Democrat who had done something similar. They would wear that story out in the press and in key state legislatures around the country, like Reagan and his welfare queen.

One Cheney family member who won't be registering to vote in Wyoming is Liz's sister Mary. And I know everyone is familiar with that story.