Others' Wisdom

At times, others are wise too

THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW
Sept. 21, 2004

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How to Steal an Election
By: Jeff Jacoby

A recent story that didn't get nearly the attention it
deserved was the New York Daily News report that 46,000
registered New York City voters are also registered to
vote in Florida. Nearly 1,700 of them have had absentee
ballots mailed to their home in the other state, and as
many as 1,000 have voted twice in the same election. Can
1,000 fraudulent votes change an election? Well, George
W. Bush won Florida in 2000 by just 537 votes.

It is illegal to register to vote simultaneously in
different jurisdictions, but scofflaws have little to
worry about. As the Daily News noted, "efforts to prevent
people from registering and voting in more than one state
rely mostly on the honor system." Those who break the law
rarely face prosecution or serious punishment. It's
easy -- and painless -- to cheat.

I learned this firsthand in 1996, when I registered my
wife's cat as a voter in Cook County, Ill., Norfolk County,
Mass., and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and then requested
absentee ballots from all three venues. My purpose wasn't
to cast illegal multiple votes -- I think I've still got
those absentee ballots saved in a file somewhere -- but to
demonstrate how vulnerable to manipulation America's
election system had become.

It was a simple scam to pull off. "Under the National
Voter Registration Act -- the 'Motor Voter law' -- states
are required to accept voter registrations by mail," I
wrote at the time. "No longer can citizens be asked to
make a trip to town hall or the county office. No longer
do they have to provide proof of residence or citizenship.
In fact, they don't have to exist. Motor Voter obliges
election officials to add to the voter list any name mailed
in on a properly filled-out registration form. Anyone so
registered can then request an absentee ballot -- by mail,
of course. The system is not only open to manipulation,
it invites it."

As journalist John Fund shows in an alarming new book,
"Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our
Democracy," the United States has an elections system that
would be an embarrassment in Honduras or Ghana. It is so
unpoliced, he writes, that at least eight of the 9/11
hijackers "were actually able to register to vote in either
Virginia or Florida while they made their deadly preparations."

How fouled up are the voter rolls? So fouled up that in
some cities there are more registered voters than there are
adults. So fouled up that when the Indianapolis Star
investigated Indiana's records a few years ago, it discovered
that hundreds of thousands of names -- as many as
one-fifth of the total -- were "bogus" since the
individuals named had moved, died, or gone to prison. So
fouled up that when a Louisiana paper filed 25 phony voter-
registration forms signed only with an "X," 21 were
approved and added to the voter list.

Illegal aliens have been registered too, since under Motor
Voter, any recipient of government benefits can sign up to
vote -- no questions asked. Did that wide-open door to
fraud cost former GOP Congressman Robert Dornan his seat in
Congress? An investigation by the Immigration and
Naturalization Service following Dornan's 1996 defeat by
Democrat Loretta Sanchez found that 4,023 noncitizens may
have cast ballots in that election. Dornan lost by 984 votes.

It shouldn't take a degree in rocket science to fix a
system this sloppy and chaotic. But not everyone wants to
fix it. Some operatives don't mind electoral cheating if
it brings more of "their" voters to the polls. Fund cites
the findings of Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson
and political scientist Larry Sabato, co-authors of a
recent book on corruption in American politics. Some
liberal activists they interviewed go so far as to justify
voter fraud on the grounds that such "extraordinary
measures" compensate for the weaker political clout of
minorities and the poor.

One simple fix -- requiring every voter to show ID when
registering and voting -- would seem to be a no-brainer.
Opinion polls show the vast majority of Americans in favor
of such a reform. After all, ID is required when boarding
an airplane or buying liquor. Why not when voting?

Yet -- incredibly -- powerful political interests have long
fought to block an ID requirement. The NAACP and La Raza
liken it to the poll tax that Southern states once used to
keep blacks from voting. A Democratic Party official says
that "ballot security" and "preventing voter fraud" are
simply code for voter suppression. That willingness to
play the race card is not merely dishonorable, it is
undemocratic. For as Fund notes, "when voters are
disenfranchised by the counting of improperly cast ballots,
their civil rights are violated just as surely as if they
were prevented from voting."

The drift toward Third World-caliber elections in the most
advanced democracy the world has ever known is scandalous.
Then again, if Americans can't be bothered to scrub the
voting rolls, or to make sure that voters are properly
ID'd, maybe they've got the election system they deserve.

©2004 Boston Globe


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