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A massive electoral fraud scandal in Puerto Rico has been revealed in Propublica today.
The TL;DR is that a gang was sneaking drugs into a prison, and exchanging those drugs with addicts in return for votes for the governor (Puerto Rico being one of the few places that lets current jailed felons vote). Federal investigators were planning an indictment against the gang, prison guards involved, and the prisoners who took the deal before orders from above in the upper echelons of government shut it down.
But there's a twist you might not expect, the votes were for the Republican governor and the higher ups who shut it down was the Trump admin. This might be the biggest this you style story yet. Trump is constantly claiming about stolen elections and voter fraud, and yet little evidence has ever shown up. We finally found a massive scheme, and it was a MAGA related plan. There is no direct connection with this plot to Trump or the governor, but the gang leaders did have some personal connections to the governor.
The scheme probably wasn't enough to secure the election (at least not with the inmates alone) as the numbers aren't, but it was closer than you might guess. Thus even with a relatively massive scandal, it probably didn't have a direct impact then but it's interesting how the investigation was spiked.
Erick Erickson (conservative radio host/podcaster) posted something interesting earlier that seems applicable here.
Perhaps Trump's focus on electoral fraud is not motivated by being against fraud, but instead just because he lost in 2020 and can't accept that hit to his ego, the shattering mythology of his victimhood, and that's why they won't push this Puerto Rico case further?
My cynical take on this is (1) in agreement that I don't believe anything in the popular press until solid facts are produced (2) but I was assured, firmly and frequently assured, that voter fraud never happened in any election ever and that it was depriving felons of their natural human rights to strip them of the right to vote while incarcerated!
If there is any truth in this story, it's probably somewhere between (a) yeah, drugs get smuggled into prison, this is a problem everywhere (except maybe Singapore, I couldn't tell you about that) (b) gosh, gangs on the outside have contact with their members inside? you startle me gravely with this information! (c) corruption in Puerto Rican politics? again, I don't know anything so I can't comment there.
It will be funny to watch all the "no corruption nowhere, safest ever elections" set scrambling to prove that this is indeed a case of electoral fraud and the "stolen elections" set claiming it's a nothingburger.
This isn't really the principal argument why felons should have the vote. It's a pragmatic one about perverse incentive. If the government can deprive people of the vote by convicting them of a particular crime, oopsie, you've created an incentive for the government to drum up those exact kinds of charges against political opponents.
I think the far more important part of imprisoning political opponents would be removing them from the political battlefield rather than get rid of their 1 vote among millions. In order to get an appreciable effect on the vote counts, you'd have to imprison so many opposition members there's no one left to vote for anyway.
As I said in another prong of this thread, I do agree that this is mostly symbolic in either direction - but I care about the government going the extra mile to avoid the appearance of impropriety w. regards to the franchise. In any case I didn't necessarily mean to die on the hill of this particular argument, merely to point out that in my experience that is the principal argument in favor of letting felons have the vote, as opposed to concern about their inalienable human rights yada yada.
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I think if we're getting into taking out political opponents, drumming up charges is already well established. Think of all the TRUMP IS A FELON! 39 FELONIES! stuff and tell me at least some of those weren't politically motivated? And I'm sure there are cases for Democrats getting stalked as well.
Gosh, we're going to let the prisoners vote, we're sure a bunch of druggies, thieves, and gangsters will respect the electoral process and nobody will be motivated to intervene, bribe, buy or sell votes, etc. Yeah, unless you let them all out of jail for the day to visit the polling booths, I don't see how you can guarantee the integrity of the voting process. And letting a bunch of convicts out on day release to vote is likely to end up with "scarpered" rather than "placed my ballot in the box".
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Sure but there is also the pragmatic argument of “criminals have proven themselves to be asocial and thus shouldn’t vote.”
We have very little evidence the government is trying to put people in jail for your concern. We have a lot of evidence the vast majority of criminals are in fact asocial scum. So this is a slope I’m not particularly worried about being slippery.
Yeah, I almost added a parenthetical about how it obviously wasn't a live concern in today's America, particularly. But I think it's one of those things where the government ought to avoid the appearance of a perverse incentive, as one of the many nested redundancies keeping us from a slide into tyranny. Caesar's wife must be above approach, etc. etc. (Indeed, this is especially persuasive to me on this issue because convicted felons represent a largely symbolic percentage of the vote in any case, so it can't do much harm to go the extra mile to prove the government's commitment to democracy.)
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