While Democrats dismiss vote fraud as a collective Republican hallucination, a study released Tuesday by the Pew Center for the States confirms the GOP’s concerns. The ghosts in America’s voting machines may be the least of our worries.
Pew has discovered that 1.8 million dead Americans are registered to vote. Perhaps worse, 2.75 million Americans are enrolled in two states each, while 68,725 are signed up in three. Indeed, Pew found, “24 million — one of every eight — active voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.”
This is just what America needs in an election year.
Advertisement
The U.S. boasts atomic weapons and an election apparatus worthy of Laos. More charitably, Pew states that America’s electoral systems “are plagued with errors and inefficiencies that waste taxpayer dollars, undermine voter confidence, and fuel partisan disputes over the integrity of our elections. Voter registration in the United States largely reflects its 19th-century origins and has not kept pace with advancing technology and a mobile society. States’ systems must be brought into the 21st century to be more accurate, cost-effective, and efficient.”
Americans are highly peripatetic, with civilians and GIs moving among their parents’ homes, college dorms, military bases, and large houses in boom times, and returning to modest dwellings when things go bust. Amid this tumult, some people vanish from the rolls while others wind up registered in multiple locations. While most are innocents in these situations, this confusion also invites and facilitates abuse.
Exacerbating this mess, Pew finds, America’s “antiquated, paper-based system remains costly and inefficient.” Oregon and Wyoming spend about $4.00 to register and manage each active voter. Canada, in contrast, uses modern, private-sector name-matching techniques to process registrations. Cost: 35 cents each.
For its part, President Obama’s Justice Department exacerbates these problems.
As former federal prosecutor J. Christian Adams explains in his superb book Injustice, Section 8 of the Motor Voter Act “requires voter rolls to be kept free of dead and ineligible voters.” As Justice attorneys were poised to investigate eight states rife with non-living and otherwise unqualified voters, top Obama appointees balked.
Adams heard Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes tell headquarters staffers in November 2009: “We have no interest in enforcing this provision of the law. It has nothing to do with increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it.”
Meanwhile, as prosecutors at Justice’s Voting Section literally play computer solitaire and watch YouTube, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission reported in June 2009 that in North Dakota, registered voters totaled 101.6 percent of the voting-age population. In Michigan, that figure was 101.9 percent; in Alaska, 102.2 percent; and in Maine, 103.9 percent. Alarms should wail when there are more registered voters in a jurisdiction than eligible adults. Instead, Justice’s snooze buttons are busier than ever.
South Carolina’s attorney general determined last month that 953 people “were deceased at the time of their participation in recent elections.” Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler compared voter rolls and drivers’-license records. Last March 8, he determined that “it is likely that many of the 4,947 voters were not citizens when they cast their vote in 2010.”
These problems vindicate efforts, primarily by Republicans, to require photo ID at the polls. Such rules will slow or stop those who try to cast ballots on behalf of deceased Americans. Citizens who lack ID cards should get them for free. Such a requirement will be far less inconvenient than another presidential-election fiasco fueled by posthumous voters.
Another solution: A company called Catalist assisted Pew’s research. Catalist, Pew notes, “applies a complex matching process to combine and analyze data to verify or update records of voters.” States should hire Catalist to update and oversee their election procedures.
As voters choose this nation’s leaders this year, America deserves better than an electoral system reminiscent of the McKinley administration.
— New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
Thank you Mr Murdock. This is exactly what must be done and anyone opposed to ID voter registration is in favour of fraud at the polling both. Simple solution, to restore trust in the system.
Both of my parents grew up in the first depression in the 30s, and were indoctrinated into believing that FDR saved them all. They both voted democrat in the 40s, 50s, and 60s in, what they considered to be the patriotic thing to do. My dad woke up in 1972, but my mom continued to vote democrat in every election. My mom passed away in Iowa a year ago in February 2011. Knowing mid-west politics, I'm afraid that she is not yet done voting for democrats.
My capture is "let go", just coincidentally the motto of the California Republican Party, which has surrendered a number of state and federal legislative seats to votes cast by aliens and immigrants often not (yet) legally eligible to vote. Bob Dornan was the first major victim, but he was a bit of an embarrassment to the establishment, so nobody lifted a finger.
California used to be at least contestable, and before that it was once solidly Republican, but gentlemen and ladies do not make crude accusations of voter fraud.
I suppose if we are going to tax the dead we might as well let them vote! To Democrats the outcome is all that matters – the end justifies the means. With this core belief it only makes sense that a voter’s perception of disenfranchisement has little if any significance.
I'm not seeing any evidence of voting "fraud" in this article. I see evidence of people being registered to vote in more than one place but not evidence they are actually voting more than once, which is what is needed for voter fraud. If this article is what passes for strong reporting, or even commentary, on NRO then count me unimpressed. Wow.
I'm not seeing any evidence of voting "fraud" in this article. I see evidence of people being registered to vote in more than one place but not evidence they are actually voting more than once, which is what is needed for voter fraud. If this article is what passes for strong reporting, or even commentary, on NRO then count me unimpressed. Wow.
Right you are, Dan. I can't for the life of me understand how Mr. Murdoch could suspect that his fellow human beings would attempt to use dead people or people who have moved or are otherwise ineligible to vote to advance their political agenda. Why, next thing you know, he will suggest that they exploit racial incidents, threaten Supreme Court Justices, or use public funds for campaigning. Shame on you, Mr. Murdoch! How cynical of you!
None of this surprises me. In 2008 I worked as a nurse at a day center for mentally disabled adults. It was an agency job, and I was substituting for the regular RN. While I was there a group of young women who unabashedly identified themselves as working for ACORN spent several days registering all of the patients at the day center to vote. When I questioned one of these young women on the legitimacy of registering someone unable to sign their name to vote she snapped back at me that I was trying to rob my patients of their right to vote, a form of discrimination against the disabled for which I could be prosecuted. The patients at the day center ranged from mildly disabled, functioning on the level of a first grader at best, to profoundly disabled, unable to speak or toilet themselves.
The administration at this state run institution was on board with registering these folks to vote, and there were posters of Obama all over the building, none of John McCain. I asked one of the ACORN workers how the profoundly disabled patients would vote and she told me that they would be brought to the polls and assisted by an advocate.
In 2009 I worked a call center for Scott Brown. A computer would display the name and phone number of someone who voted 'independent' in the 2008 election. I pressed a button, the number was dialed, and when someone answered I politely asked if they would consider voting for Scott Brown in the upcoming election. Almost 20% of the time I ended up talking to a foreign national, Chinese, Korean, Mexican, Brazilian.., who insisted to me that they didn't vote in the last election. One time a woman answered the phone and yelled at me that the person I was asking for was her 11 year old daughter, and how did I get a hold of her daughter's name when they were staunch democrats and would never vote independent, anyway. I should have asked her how it was that her daughter registered to vote independent and voted in the last election.
This all got me wondering if many of the illegal immigrants voting aren't actually voting, they're just being represented by someone else. If a Spanish speaking add, an add in Portuguese and an add in Mandarin could be run on the radio urging non citizens to take their names off the voter rolls so that they can avoid the risk of being accused of voter fraud, I wonder if there would be a number of foreigners showing up at town halls across the country to have their names removed. Or if the adds said, "don't be used as a tool for voter fraud," not mentioning prosecution as the liberals are unlikely to pursue such a course. Just a thought.
I have offered wondered why the party that panders to the lazy, ignorant, and stupid would need to resort to such tactics. Are they so concerned of losing the election?
It only makes sense; if you are going to tax the dead you may as well let them vote…
To Democrats what matters is the outcome – the end justifies the means. The fact that the integrity of the system is severely compromised and voters are disenfranchised means nothing as long as power is gained.
If we tax the Ghosts of Voters Past (AKA: Death Tax), why not let them vote too?
It seems Progressives are more concerned with the outcome rather than the process - the end justifies the means.
The company you reference at the bottom of your article, Catalist, is (I've heard) in business with the DNC and numerous leftist organizations. While we do need the voter rolls to be cleaned, I wouldn't necessarily trust that particular company with the job.
