Jim Geraghty has a good report on the efforts being made by the Democratic party in New Jersey to make it easier for them to commit absentee-ballot fraud. They want the secretary of state to restrict the ability of local county clerks to use signature comparisons to check the authenticity of absentee-ballot requests, which is the only verification procedure they have.

Of course, that is not the only kind of fraud that occurs in New Jersey. While researching a paper for the Heritage Foundation in 2008 on impersonation fraud, I ran across an incident in Hoboken, N.J., in a June 2007 city council election. The former zoning board president was headed to his polling place when he noticed a group of men on a street corner being given index cards by two people. One of those men later entered the polling place and tried to vote in the name of another registered voter who, it tuned out, no longer lived in the ward. The imposter was stopped from casting a fraudulent vote only because the zoning board president challenged his eligibility. The imposter ran out of the polling place when he was challenged and was chased and caught. The faux voter admitted to police that he was part of a group of men from a homeless shelter who had been paid $10 each to vote using other voters’ names.

If this turns out to be a very close election, there are a lot of political operatives and Democrats who profit from the patronage system that infests the New Jersey government who are going to be willing to do just about anything to make sure that Jon Corzine is reelected.