The Realities Of Illegal Voting
According to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School and the author of this in-depth report by Mr. Justin Levitt called “The Truth About Voter Fraud,” there is nothing to worry about whatsoever with the American voting system.
America has no problem with voting fraud!
Whew! Don’t you feel better already?
Which, if 100% true, begs the question: If the voting rolls in the entire U.S. of A are perfect, and everyone is a Boy or Girl Scout who votes with integrity each and every election, what exactly is the problem with requiring some form of photo ID each and every time they vote?
Mr. Levitt has likely done a wonderful job of academic research based on copious note-taking and diving deep into the stacks of the Library of Congress to examine the voting case challenges for every Supreme Court and appellate court decision over the past decade.
But I question whether or not Mr. Levitt has actually ever: 1) run for political office; 2) run a campaign; or 3) been involved in any high-level position in any large political campaign in this nation?
No matter where you are on the photo ID issue, whether you think it is voter suppression or a necessary evil in a world where the less-scrupulous amongst us take advantage of weak points in any system, you need to know some of the real-life mechanics behind our nation’s voting apparatus before you yell at each other over this issue.
There is a lot of difference between the “truth” put forth from the ivory towers of academia after extended research over a long period of time and the low-down, nitty-gritty dirt of fast-moving modern election campaigns in America today.
For one thing, the enforcement staffs of any board of election or state investigative agency are woefully inadequate and under-provisioned to go after every allegation or charge of voting impropriety across the nation.
Trying to ‘prove’ that there is widespread voting fraud is simply impossible without interactive computer databases shared across state lines between all 50 states’ boards of elections. It is also very hard to ‘prove’ without a very expensive, massive coordinated effort by every state to comb through the election results of every election to determine some sort of statistically significant trends or patterns.
Absent those two factors, every observation on election ‘fraud’ is somewhat questionable. Those on the left who say with confidence that, ‘There is no election fraud!” can’t be proven completely wrong. Those on the right who assert that, ‘There is massive voter fraud!” can’t be proven completely crazy, either.
Reports such as the one from the Brennan Center almost always focus on the ‘reported’ cases where someone has taken the time and the trouble and the expense to bring charges against people they think have committed voter fraud, and it has gone through some sort of judicial or legal review by some governmental agency.
If they are never reported or challenged, the number of suspected cases drop significantly.
It is like that old metaphysical saw: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” If there are lots of illegal votes being cast each election, and no one either 1) cares; 2) reports them; or 3) has the money to hunt them down and then prosecute the perpetrators, then is it really voting fraud?
I am still stunned each and every time I go vote in North Carolina and pull out a driver’s license to prove I am who I say I am before voting, and the gentleman or lady at the voting booth covers their eyes and says: “We are not supposed to see that.”
Why not? Don’t you want to know for sure that I am who I say I am and I actually live at the address I just stated, which I could have memorized from the on-line voting registration lists?
The reply: Nope. Now move along, you troublemaker! Next in line, please!
There are rightly significant concerns with the existing enforcement of our national and state voting laws. The stories I have heard over the past 32 years of being around and in-and-out of campaigns would make your hair curl, even if you don’t have much left on your head.
If you ever hear of a story where someone just miraculously found a bag of uncounted votes underneath the desk in the elementary school in Lizard Lick at 3:30 a.m., the morning after an election, you can be pretty darned sure that something just ain’t right with most if not all of those votes. Just sayin’.
The chances of anyone being charged with voting illegally, however, is like the IRS auditing your tax returns, which is less than 1% every year.
That is the chance millions of people take each year. The IRS simply cannot police every single one of the 137 million tax returns filed each year. Roughly 1 million are so-called ‘correspondence audits’ where things are cleared up by mail. Less than 310,000 are actual ‘field audits’ where guys from the IRS dressed in dark suits and green eyeshades come for a little visit to see what you have been up to over the past few years.
Does the fact that the IRS only audits 0.2% of all tax returns in person each year mean no one else is cheating on the amount of income they report or deductions they take, even in the slightest little bit?
Doubt. It. Very. Much.
I’m obviously not endorsing illegal voting by any of you this upcoming election season. If you do, and are caught somehow, you will be charged with a felony and probably serve some time in jail. Just like anyone of any race, income strata, creed, or religion who commits fraud by voting illegally in any fashion should do time. Anyone.
But as an academic exercise, here are just two ways that a person can commit voting fraud. Operatives within the Republican and Democratic Party know how these games are played and can be taken advantage of in a close election. Both of these tactics should be condemned by everyone, no matter your political philosophy or outlook or choice for President.
Regardless of your background, political party, race or income levels, everyone should agree that a single vote cast illegally in America is not a good thing for our democratic republic. But here are two ways it works:
1) Dead People Voting
One of the easiest ways of voting ‘illegally’ is to peruse the local obituaries for about six months before an election. Keep track of the names of any man or woman who has passed away, depending on your gender, and then go on-line with your local Board of Elections to find the name of that person and see if they are still registered to vote or not come election time.
If they are registered to vote, write down their address and precinct on a legal pad and just keep looking.
Come early voting period, or election day itself, people armed with this research can walk into up to 220 different precincts in their congressional district and potentially cast up to 219 ‘illegal’ votes, just by telling the registrar “your” (that of the deceased person) and “your” address (remember, they can’t ask for any ‘proof’ of your name or address, such as looking at your driver’s license, etc.).
There is a very high probability of these people being able to vote multiple times during the election season simply because the local boards of elections do not have the time, manpower or resources to purge their official voting rolls every time a person dies, or even once per month, or even once every six months in some areas, and in some selected areas not even every year, two years or 10 years!
Now, do I think the vast majority of American citizens are hardworking, honest, God-fearing people who would never think of violating the sacred trust of voting in our democratic republic?
Sure. But I’m not concerned about them.
We should be concerned about the small percentage of not-so-honest people who have no problem voting two, five, 10 or perhaps 220 different times under the guise of another person who is no longer among the living.
If you don’t think these types of unprincipled people exist in the world of American politics, then I have a London Bridge in the Arizona desert that I’d like to sell you like to sell you. These people exist.
2) College Students Voting in Person in Their College Towns and Via Absentee Voting Back in Their Home States
This one is so impossibly easy that it’s surprising the voting totals of college-age students nationwide are not twice what they actually are each year.
The only reason why college students don’t swamp the turnout in every election is because so few college students actually vote in any election any year, including the big Presidential elections every four years.
Here’s the data from the US Census Bureau that shows below 46% of the college-aged population voted even in the ‘massive’ Obama surge of 2008. In off-year congressional elections such as 2010, college students turn out at less than a 20% rate. In off-off year elections, such as for school boards and municipal seats, they are decimal dust in terms of turnout.
A college student can register to vote in their home state at age 18. He or she can then go off to college in another state, sometime far away from Minnesota or Florida or North Carolina, and register to vote in their college towns.
Does each town and municipality in the nation have the capability to connect electronically with the home board of elections of each and every out-of-state student to double-check and see if they have deleted their home voting registration before allowing them to vote in their college towns?
Again, very doubtful. Most places don’t have the time or the resources to call the board of elections even if they are an in-state student to check and see if the student had deleted their home city registration before registering in the town of the state university or the private institution in which they are enrolled.
I have heard anecdotes upon anecdotes and personal testimonies upon personal testimonies where students have said that, “My professor has told us all to register in our college town and vote absentee in our hometowns.”
Do I have written proof? No. I didn’t ask for it either.
But let’s say you are a very idealistic and motivated young college student who really wants his/her candidate to win the White House this year. It could be Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. Would you be at least a little bit tempted to vote in your college town with all your friends, and go to a victory beer party afterwards…even if you also voted absentee back home three weeks earlier?
Without a national computer database to enforce and ensure compliance with voting law, the only next best option is to make sure college students can’t register to vote in college towns without applying for a valid state driver’s license and a change of legal residency to the state in which he/she attends college.
Or else….we will be forced to rely on the trust and honesty and integrity of 18-24 year olds who are still in college.
Which do you feel more comfortable with?
With all that as a backdrop, my advice to you for this upcoming election mirrors the infinite wisdom of Animal House’s Bluto Blutarsky: “Start drinking heavily.”
It’s going to be that close of an election year at the presidential level.
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