Published November 6, 2015 – Woman Jailed on Charge of Illegal Voting
A Grand Prairie woman who is not an American citizen was arrested Friday on charges she voted illegally in Dallas County, prosecutors said.
Rosa Maria Ortega, 35, was booked into the Tarrant County Jail and was being held on $10,000 bond.
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Dallas County Elections Administrator Toni Pippins-Poole said records showed that Ortega had voted a total of five times.The first was in the Republican primary in 2004 and the most recent was the Republican primary runoff in May 2014, Pippins-Poole said.
Ms. Ortega’s conviction and eight year prison sentence last month is getting a lot more attention. Not all that informed attention (apparently people in this country don’t understand how one can be a legal resident and not a citizen) and the GOP & Trumpsters are using this to support their claim of massive voter fraud. Conveniently omitting that this case predated the 2016 election and either ignoring that Ms. Ortega had previously illegally voted in Republican primaries or fact-free allegations that she must be a stealth Democratic messing with the GOP primary results.
Nothing wrong with widespread reporting of an instance of voter fraud. Nothing wrong with a penalty that would discourage most people from voting illegally. That would be:
Two-thirds of US would struggle to cover $1,000 crisis
Not $5,000. Thirty days in jail would be a real punishment for most people. Eight years is like something out of the dark ages.
What’s also not okay is for jerks to use this one instance as evidence for Trump’s claim of millions of illegal voters. Or that it contradicts what liberals have said about voter fraud. Liberals have always allowed that voter fraud exists in teeny-tiny numbers (and based on the very rare fraudsters that have been caught, they are as likely (or more likely) to be Republican as Democrat. The liberal position is that tight restrictions on voter eligibility disenfranchises far more legally eligible voters than the few non-citizens that attempt to vote. And that those tighter restrictions increases the administrative cost of elections, increased and unnecessary government spending that Republicans pretend to care about). (Note that NYTimes has a front page article on this case if you care to read it.)
Voter disenfranchisement is always wrong. Doubly wrong when, as it generally is, to suppress the legal vote of one’s political opponent. If a party and/or candidate can’t win fair and square, then they aren’t suitable for public office. Doesn’t matter if it’s Democrats or Republicans disenfranchising voters.
The penalty for voter fraud should be the same regardless of political party affiliation, race, color, or creed. I may chuckle at a white Republican caught engaging in voter fraud, but I don’t find it appropriate to throw him/her in the slammer for eight years. How many Republicans would disagree with me on that? Any?