There's "Voter Fraud" and "Voter Fraud"

We are all caught up lately in comments made by President Trump in relation to the issue of fraudulent voting in the 2016 and likely past elections as well.  But the issue of voter fraud actually covers a couple of separate areas, and we need to recognize them, lest we start talking past each other.  And you know I hate that.

You see, there is the issue of the people who actually vote, and their qualifications to do so, meaning their citizenship, their legal residence, all that kind of thing.  For those who are not citizens, for those who use a fraudulent identity, all those actions which are criminal, well, that is an issue and the perpetrators are the individuals doing the voting.

But there is the whole governmental aspect to this as well.  People leave jurisdictions and go to another; people die; people are subtracted from eligibility to vote as well as being added.  The governmental entity -- let's call it the "state" for ease of reference, even though it is mainly a municipal or county-level thing -- is responsible for maintaining an accurate list of those in that jurisdiction who have lawfully registered to vote.

That list is a living list; i.e., names are added and (should be) subtracted on a daily basis.  But apparently they are not; at least not subtracted.  I know this because of the incredible rigmarole I had to go through to get taken off the voter rolls in Fairfax County, Virginia, where I no longer live.

Having moved in August, and wanting to register to vote in my new state, I called the Fairfax County Board of Elections to get my name taken off the rolls.  Why?  Because Virginia does not allow election workers to require ID at the polls, and someone could simply walk in to the middle school where I voted, give my name and former address, and vote, likely for someone I didn't like.  I didn't want that to happen.

And to tell you the truth, I probably would not have bothered to contact the county had I not been hearing all this stuff about fraudulent voting.  I remembered the stories in 2012 about precincts in Philadelphia where Obama received literally all the votes, not one single vote for Romney, and no one looked into it as a fraud possibility.  I also knew that the Obama Administration had shut down some state investigations into voter registration fraud.

You wouldn't believe how hard it was to un-register as a voter in a county in which I no longer lived.  Letters, phone calls, faxes -- who would bother?  Yet had I not done that, I could have shown up at the polls there too, having already voted early here, and cast a second ballot.  How remarkably easy that would have been.

And you know the Hillary people were aware of how easy that would have been.

So while I applaud the side of law enforcement that is looking at assessing what kind of fraud has happened, and punishing those who have done so, it is perhaps more important to do what is necessary to eliminate the possibility of that fraud, and the responsibility for that lays squarely on the shoulders of state and local governments with the assistance of the Justice Department.

Right now, for example, let's look at states that have had their voter ID laws dumped in the courts.  Take the logic down the path a bit.  Since you cannot ask for an ID, the only logistical way to handle identification of voters, is to have a list of registered voters by address, and check them off as they vote.  How silly is that?

It's silly because I could walk in to a precinct, a 65-year-old man, and claim to be my next-door neighbor, a 23-year-old female, let's say an ethnic African, and what can the Election Board person do?  All they can do is check off the box that says that she voted.  I don't have to prove who I am, as long as I know the name and address of the neighbor.

It is incumbent upon the states to do (A) a one-off sweep through the rolls, starting with what they have and matching against death certificates, motor vehicle records and other methods to determine who no longer lives at the registered address (or lives at all); and then (B) implement a process that automatically removes such people from the rolls and requires re-registration and re-proof of residency and citizenship.  If you want, we could add (C) a removal of every name that has not voted for two years and require re-registration.

What has been frightening is not only that some states have done nothing at all to address this, but that the Obama Justice Department had actively worked to stop some states from trying to fix their voting rolls.

The point of all this is that whether or not there is extensive fraud, there is most certainly the capacity for fraud.  And it is imperative that, if for some reason we can't identify voters at the polls, we at least make sure that the voter rolls we do rely on are accurate and annually purged of the moved, the dead and the non-citizens.

Let's make sure, as we discuss the topic, that one fraudulent vote or one million, we need to have faith in our system.  And I don't have that faith right now.  The checks and balances are simply not there.

Fix it, Mr. Trump and Mr. Sessions.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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