AMGer “Thistle” doesn’t think anyone should criticize Charlie Summers, because even though he started out with 206 suspicious college kids and ended up with 400-and-something cases of wasted state investigatory resources and one El Salvadorean who voted in 2002 and has already been deported, Mr. Summers apparently came out with some other completely unexpected findings.

Says Thistle:

It appears these reporters came to the press conference with their stories written already. Why the singular focus on fraud? What the Secretary of State’s investigation found from a very small sampling (4/100′s of 1 percent of the voters in Maine’s Central Voter Registration system) are several weaknesses: students registered in Maine and in their home states, noncitizens registered to vote, a Maine law requiring municipalities to keep voting records two years only, and hundreds of potential dual voting cases where the same voters appear on more than one municipal voting list.

Let’s break this down.

Why the singular focus on fraud?

Maybe because Maine Republicans have been saying over and over again that there are lots of it? If we aren’t supposed to be focused on fraud, why did Charlie Webster hold that press conference about, well, fraud?

What the Secretary of State’s investigation found from a very small sampling (4/100′s of 1 percent of the voters in Maine’s Central Voter Registration system) are several weaknesses:

Wrong. They did not grab a random sample. They picked the 206 people that Charlie Webster had preselected and believed were likely fraudulent. Not just maybe kinda suspicious, but so apparently fraudulent that he had to hold a press conference about it right away. Just could not wait. And then Maine Republicans threw in other reported allegations, including things like driver’s license fraud. One would assume that they investigated the most likely cases first because, after all, they wanted to find fraud. Finding fraud supports their argument. And they looked back, apparently, all the way to at least 2002.

So the sample was not 4/100ths of 1 percent of Maine voters- it was 500 of the most suspicious cases anyone could find in at least the last nine years. And of those, only one case of actual fraud was found. If you extrapolate this out, one would expect about 1 case for every 500 reports, once a decade or so. Is that really a problem? I see that as damned near perfect.

Thistle said:

students registered in Maine and in their home states, noncitizens registered to vote, a Maine law requiring municipalities to keep voting records two years only, and hundreds of potential dual voting cases where the same voters appear on more than one municipal voting list.

Okay, one at a time. It is not illegal for students to be registered in two states. That is not Maine’s problem. It is also something that, short of registering all Americans in a Federal database and enforcing reporting requirements whenever any American ever leaves a municipality, you just can’t solve.

Second: non-citizens registered to vote? Well, about half a dozen. This is a human system, after all. But how does ending same day registration solve this? It doesn’t have anything to do with it. The only possible solution is to have a better way for a town clerk to judge if a person is really an American citizen at the time when they register. It isn’t that easy; no American is required to have any particular identification to continue living here. A homeless person can’t just go get a passport, but they should still be allowed to vote. So while there are arguably some steps we could take to improve identification for voting purposes, it is 100% clear that ending same-day registration will not help in the slightest. Town clerks don’t research the background of everyone who signs up to vote. If someone has a fake driver’s license or a fake passport, well, your town clerk is simply unlikely to catch it. Town clerks just don’t have the resources to stop this. It doesn’t matter how many days they have before an election because they simply don’t do anything after a person presents identification that appears to be accurate.

What can we do about fraudulent identification? The idea is that penalties are stiff enough that people won’t risk trying. Just like if someone wants to rob your house, well, they probably can. All we can do is punish people who do commit the crime to discourage others from trying.

Keeping records more than two years? Sure, why not. Of course, you’ve got to pay for that. Space isn’t free.

Finally, “hundreds of potential dual voting cases where the same voters appear on more than one municipal voting list” is total bunk. This happens because people move. We are allowed to move from town A to town B. It does not indicate voter fraud.

Here’s my final take: If you want to hire some people to investigate cases each election and track down the one out of every five-hundred leads that might end with driver’s license fraud, well, fine. It costs lots of money for little benefit, but sure. Go ahead.

But let’s be honest: same day registration has nothing to do with any of this. Nothing. And don’t complain about how the media is covering the story when your guy, Charlie Webster, decided to hold a press conference and announce he found 206 cases of almost-sort of-just wait and see voter fraud. He was lying. As in, making it up. Bullshitting. Why should any reporter give him the benefit of the doubt again?

Charlie Webster has no credibility left and Charlie Summers’ is evaporating rapidly. Quit whining; you said we would find fraud and we didn’t find fraud. Charlie Summers said some other stuff to try and save face, but none of it was anything that required an “investigation” to determine. It is, frankly, embarrassing.