Too Close to Call

ON THE evening of November 4, television stations in four states ran stories based on the work of The Fair Elections Group. In Dallas, a television reporter registered animals at the zoo to vote. Captain James T. Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise was among the registered voters in Tampa, along with a few housepets of station employees. A reporter in Colorado registered multiple times by using variations of her own name. And in California, a reporter asked an incumbent congressman from Orange County and his opponent if they thought that their race could be tainted by voter fraud. The congressman replied that, considering the lack of security in the election process, fraud was a very real possibility. His opponent had no such worries; she said that there is no fraud in the system.

The candidates did not know that just hours before the interview the reporter had received an analysis of Orange County’s list of registered voters’ completed by The Fair Elections Group. The Group’s analysis had identified over 12,000 duplicate registrations. Not surprisingly, the duplicate registrations are disproportionately high in that hotly contested congressional race. Many of the people who were registered twice had requested an absentee ballot for each of their registrations. Some of them requested an absentee ballot for only one of their registrations, but this still allows for a second vote at the polls. The more creative voters registered at two different addresses, but some had both absentee ballots sent to the same post office box. We also found that a very successful registration drive had been conducted in the district. In one precinct over 400 voters were registered on October 7, and 392 of these new voters requested an absentee ballot on the same day.

KS

About the Author

Karen Saranita

ON THE evening of November 4, television stations in four states ran stories based on the work of The Fair Elections Group. In Dallas, a television reporter registered animals at the zoo to vote. Captain James T. Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise was among the registered voters in Tampa, along with a few housepets of station employees. A reporter in Colorado registered multiple times by using variations of her own name. And in California, a reporter asked an incumbent congressman from Orange County and his opponent if they thought that their race could be tainted by voter fraud. The congressman replied that, considering the lack of security in the election process, fraud was a very real possibility. His opponent had no such worries; she said that there is no fraud in the system.

The candidates did not know that just hours before the interview the reporter had received an analysis of Orange County’s list of registered voters’ completed by The Fair Elections Group. The Group’s analysis had identified over 12,000 duplicate registrations. Not surprisingly, the duplicate registrations are disproportionately high in that hotly contested congressional race. Many of the people who were registered twice had requested an absentee ballot for each of their registrations. Some of them requested an absentee ballot for only one of their registrations, but this still allows for a second vote at the polls. The more creative voters registered at two different addresses, but some had both absentee ballots sent to the same post office box. We also found that a very successful registration drive had been conducted in the district. In one precinct over 400 voters were registered on October 7, and 392 of these new voters requested an absentee ballot on the same day.