|
HOW TO STEAL AN ELECTION By Jeff Jacoby The Thursday, September 16, 2004 (First of two columns) A recent story that didn't get nearly the attention
it deserved was the New York Daily News report http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/224449p-192807c.html
that 46,000 registered 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 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," http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/stel/stel.html
the 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 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. (Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.) -- ## -- To subscribe to (or unsubscribe from) Jeff
Jacoby's mailing list, please visit http://www.JeffJacoby.com.
To see a month's worth of his recent columns, go to http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/jacoby/. Jeff Jacoby welcomes comments and reads all
his mail. Unfortunately, he receives so many letters that he cannot answer each
one personally. -- ## -- |