I’m absolutely happy that the margin (for almost all the races) was wide enough that it was not only outside the margin of error, but outside the plausible margin of any kind of fraud.
All the same, I’m developing an idea about crowdsourcing some post-election audits to try and see if we can generate enough data to either confirm that there were irregularities – or make a convincing argument that there were not.
I’d love to toss out a challenge to the conservative bloggers who tried to raise the ACORN/registration fraud as a meaningful risk to the integrity of the election.
First of all, I think it’s likely that every state has a significant number of ‘zombie registrations’ – registrations from people who have died, have moved out of state, or registered illegally either deliberately or inadvertently.
Given a set of assumptions about the quality of the work that ACORN did, you can either assume that they did great audits of the cards turned in by their low-wage registration workers, and thus created very few zombies, or that they didn’t (either deliberately or through lack of resources, processes, or ability) and so created a lot of zombies.
So it’s reasonable to assert that there’s a ‘zombie issue’
Now the question is where there are exploits we can devise that use those zombies in a plausible way to commit voting fraud.
I’ll exclude from this list encouraging people who shouldn’t be registered but are from voting. That doesn’t rise to the level of systemic fraud on one hand, and to the extent that we accept Patterico’s argument that this represents a large number of illegal aliens who have registered and voted – it represents broader policy issues.
So how would you audit for voting fraud like this??
I’d like to throw down a challenge to the people who care about this to work with me in devising ways that we can do some proof tests to see if the problem exists, to try and sample it’s extent.
Lots of knowledgeable people have looked at this and made the flat statement that it isn’t an issue.
If you think it is – and I’m in the ‘it might be’ crowd – then let’s get some folks together and figure out how to demonstrate it.
Doing retrospective fraud detection is going to be a hard problem due to the necessary anonymity for voting. It may be easier to tackle this by being specific about what is suspected in particular this time, and seeing if there would be data to (in MythBusters terminology) mark those suspicions as Busted, Plausible or Confirmed.
Seems to me you have to start from a threat model. What is suspected to have been done? So here are a few such models:
Zombie voting. The classic Chicago style fraud. Voters who have died or moved away are kept on the rolls, either by corrupted election officials (conspiracy) or simply because the rolls are not purged in any systematic form (incompetence). (Note that in the latter case someone inside or outside the election organization still has to compile a zombie list for the attackers.) On election day, the zombies are either voted ‘retail’ by individuals or systematically by corrupt election officials.
DOS/chaffing by ACORN. ACORN submitted registration lists that were massively invalid if not fraudulent. One can argue this was due to perverse incentives in ACORN’s own operation, but let’s assume the worst here. Simply submitting such huge lists might indicate an intent to overwhelm the legitimate operations of the registrars, and constitute a DOS – denial of service – attack on functions (such as validation) that might be abandoned due to the need to handle the load by a deadline date. The goal could be a form of chaffing – hiding the signal (a few percent of identities that will be fraudulently voted later) inside an overwhelming amount of noise (Daffy Duck, etc.). The payload is to have those smaller number of identities voted fraudulently, either by individuals or by corrupt elections officials.
Systematic multiple registrations in different jurisdictions. This could either be as a result of an ACORN-style chaff attack that has the same identity in multiple places, or simply done by individuals ‘attacking’ jurisdictions with weak identification requirements. The payoff is vote those multiple registrations. There’s a video floating around of one individual bragging about having done this.
Detecting these retrospectively is not going to be trivial, without breaching anonymity of the vote. One obvious thing to do, without that risk, is build lists of voters who should NOT have appeared at the polls by compiling death certificates, records of utility turnoffs, etc. Then see who was checked off on the master list for the election (it’s kept in our county, I don’t know about others) who is also on the list of voters should not have appeared. There will be some inevitable ‘false hits’ in the match, so a few possible zombies could be ignored. But it you get a percent or two…
Something similar might be done, more expensively, by exploiting the ‘householding’ data compiled by commercial data bureaus for marketing purposes. They’ve likely got a better picture of who’s in an area, and who has left, than election officials.
One other retrospective test would be to take some of the large ACORN lists, and after sanitizing the obvious rubbish, run them against such a house holding database.
AL,
I don’t think it is an issue but here is a way to find out if it is.
ACORN submitted thousands of fraudulent registrations, presumably to allow voting by people who shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Since election officials know which precincts these fake registrants are in, and the fake voters don’t know their registrations were rejected, couldn’t you just pick a few sample precincts and see how many fake voters turn up? The fake registrations could be flagged in some way to alert the poll workers to signal an authority standing by. Do this in 100 precincts around the country that have 50+ attempted but fake registrations. See how many of the 5,000 fake voters tried to vote.
mark,
Doesn’t that require a procedure that was not in place on Tuesday? In principle, there are lots of ways to detect fraud that were not implemented.
Am I missing something?
Jim, I meant next time. I assume ACORN will still be active in voter registration and still submit plenty of fraudulent cards. Since we know about thousands of these in advance, it wouldn’t be to hard to check on them next voting day.
Voting fraud? Sure, how about “this fun little video”:http://blogs.phillyburbs.com/blog.php/?p=35832&cat=8 for an example. (As referenced by “Mark Steyn”:http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTEwZjA2ZjYyYmZiZjhmZmM4NWM3MGJjNTBmOTRiMDQ= yesterday)
And apparently “the authorities can’t be bothered to investigate”:http://www.politickerpa.com/danh/2526/no-immediate-inquiry-forthcoming-alleged-voting-twice-incident the proudly-multiple-voting Mr. Jones.
Unbeliever, You do realize, don’t you that the guy was saying he came back to vote a couple of times because the lines were so long, not that he actually voted a couple of times.
_ACORN submitted thousands of fraudulent registrations, presumably to allow voting by people who shouldn’t be allowed to vote_
Mark: It’s worth pointing out that Acorn has to turn every registration in BY LAW. Even if they suspect them to be fraudulent. Even if it’s named “Mickey Mouse”. Even if it’s incorrectly filled in. Even if they suspect the individual is illegal. IT IS AGAINST THE LAW TO THROW AWAY A REGISTRATION, even a fraudulent registration.
Now, they do mark registrations they expect to be fraudulent, and actually hand them to the government in a different group. However, they cannot legally decide what is legit and what is illegitimate.
Alchemist, I do realize that. It’s why it would be fairly easy to determine whether ACORN is deliberately perpetuating the fraud in order to get people to vote who shouldn’t be voting, or, as they claim, they are victims of the fraud themselves and it doesn’t lead to voter fraud. If these ACORN registered Mickey Mouses are not trying to vote, then there’s not much of an issue to address.
It’s true that, by law, ACORN has to turn in every registration form it gets. It’s also true that this is NOT the first election ACORN has been in operation, and they have reliably turned in massive numbers of fraudulent registrations, year in, year out, for quite some time.
Are we to believe that it’s simply impossible to run a large scale registration drive without generating upwards of 40% bad registrations? They couldn’t change _something_, maybe stop hiring convicted felons, or pay piece work only for _good_ registrations, with a deduction from your paycheck for any bad ones? Sure they could. They don’t bother to.
How would this work? I start with the assumption that the fraud is going to be committed on the inside, by elections officials. It’s going to be conducted in places where the elections officials are all of one party. And it’s going to be done by means of absentee ballots.
Next, assume that the elections officials, being in cahoots with the people generating the fraudulent registrations, know which ones they are.
Then it should be fairly easy to generate large numbers of absentee ballots, and vote them for the ‘zombies’. Since you’re running the process, all the safeguards are useless.
Now, how would you detect this? It’s quite obvious: The list of people who supposedly voted in the election has to be obtained, and some outside organization has to _track down_ the alleged voters, and confirm whether they exist, and did vote.
I’ve actually heard of people trying this: They got shut down FAST, accused of “voter intimidation”, as though anyone in their right mind, no matter how evil, would bother intimidating voters right AFTER an election…
to either confirm that there were irregularities – or make a convincing argument that there were not.
And the crux of the problem is that you raise the question. No one should have to wonder. I blame Al Gore.
“Lots of knowledgeable people have looked at this”
That’s code for “liberal academics,” right?
Just having fun.
AL,
Where I live, fraud would be trivial. I know that I could vote in multiple precincts. I know it. It relies upon the fact that people who have departed the area in some way are not scrubbed from the rolls. This is the single biggest issue across the entire electoral system. The 6-figure number of people registered in two states among only Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania bears that out.
The only thing asked of a prospective voter at my polling place is name and address. You’re able to see the list while you’re standing there, so you could walk in only knowing a name. If the name and address match up (which they will, of course, because you can look down and see them) someone puts a check mark on the list and hands you a ballot.
Now, the exploit. I know people who have died, or at least know of them. I know people who have moved elsewhere. The only things stopping me from voting in each of their names at multiple polling locations are time and personal honor.
It really is that simple.
I don’t want to wade into the debate over whether there’s fraud or not…since it’s arguable, it should be investigated. And this is the perfect kind of project for crowdsourcing.
It’s a “database comparison” kind of project, and a couple of newspapers did a quickie kind of look and found some duplicate registrations and some duplicate actual votes.
Before each election the concerns and accusations come out, after the election the subject dies, and it comes back the next time having had NO resolution.
IMHO, an in-depth investigation is DEFINITELY worth the effort, and I would like to volunteer my time in whatever capacity is needed.
Somewhere in Penn., they ran the Republican poll watchers out with the permission
of a local judge. It was said that they then just started running ballots through the machines.
I’m a lot more worried about campaign finance fraud than voter fraud. I don’t think it’s impossible to find out, but there isn’t any systematic research method that would help very much. If I were Obama I’d destroy the database before someone leaks it. The size of such a database isn’t all that impressive, either. It’d fit on a cheap thumb drive. It’s quite possible someone has it stashed in case Obama doesn’t turn out to be the leader they hope he is, but that’s just a guess. The bottom line is that we’d better close this loophole or give up on the idea of reasonably honest elections.
ACORN registered people multiple times (one guy that was interviewed on television was registered 72 times by his own admission).
Theoretically, he could have voted multiple times, had the voter rolls not been exhaustively purged of duplicate names. However, because of lack of manpower, most voter rolls are not thoroughly purged of duplicate names and errors.
In addition, one of the reasons the Obama camp was encouraging early voting through absentee ballots (which are used by people who cannot travel to the polls on election day, as well as those temporarily living outside their voting district) is that once an absentee ballot is opened, it cannot be verified.
This allows a group like ACORN to register fake voters, then have them vote with absentee ballots. In fact, this type of fraud was exposed in the last election cycle in Florida, when volunteers (not sure if from ACORN) were improperly handling absentee ballots collected from mainly minority neighborhoods.
Not sure how to prevent it, but it is a worry going forward, as such fraud debases the entire election process.
I’d like to see voter registration information tied to things like a fingerprint. Combine DMV/voter registration databases (wouldn’t be easy or cheap) and eventually any duplicate or fake registrations should be discovered and cleaned up. Any fraudulent activity should be easier to spot.
Mike: Did he register with 72 different addresses, or the same address 72 times? Either way, it was likely that only one registration actually went through. So, he just made Acorn do 72 times the work, but there’s unlikely to be a chance to commit voter fraud. This is old news, and it’s been covered here before.
Mark: I’ve been thinking about your strategy. It’s not a horrible idea, but I think the poll workers would not like this plan. I think it would basically require police officers to be stationed near (basically next door or inside the polling place) in order for the strategy to basically apprehend the suspect.
Now, if you wanted to reject ballots (but not tell someone) so that you could just see how many tagged ballots get registered… well, that would work as a survey. I would guess there’s something unconstitutional about telling someone there allowed to vote when they’re not. That would have to be explored.
Brett: I think this idea is a pretty good solution. Although I do see why it could be seen as intimidation. In places in the South, if you have white cops start going through black neighborhoods telling people that a vote came out of this address and we’re just trying to reach this individual…. this may be misconstued (to put it lightly).
Here’s how you could do it though: Take the registration list, and remove all the registrations that didn’t vote (20-40%). Then you remove name logged in driver’s licenses (cut another 90%). Then you check the remaining identities against credit reports, public utilities and tax data. I believe most of this information can be easily and legally verified.
You should end up with a small list of names that belongs to a couple of groups:
1)Those extremely poor or homeless (note: this people will be hard to find, but still have a right to vote)
2) Those who have recently moved into an area
3) Those who have committed fraud
We could solve alot of these problems by having a national database of voters, where we could check registrations to ID numbers, movements, obituaries etc. If we’re really serious about finding fraud, we’re going to need to be better organized.
There was enough fraudulent activity that had this been another country, Jimmy Carter would have insisted on oversight.
#18 Alchemist:
It would be a pretty messy match/merge but I’d be willing to do it for $100/hr. In Australia voting is mandatory, so they must have a fairly robust system of voter rolls.
Sort of off-topic, but there appears to be something weird going on in Minnesota with the Senatorial election. See “Power Line Story”:http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/11/022024.php
RHSwan
Alchemist:
_Mark: I’ve been thinking about your strategy. It’s not a horrible idea_
Gee, thanks.
_but I think the poll workers would not like this plan_
It would only involve 100 of them, out of tens of thousands.
_I think it would basically require police officers to be stationed near (basically next door or inside the polling place) in order for the strategy to basically apprehend the suspect._
Not interested in apprehension, so much as counting, for the sake of the survey. My idea was to discover to what extent voter fraud was taking place. I now see, however, that AL’s quest was to find out _retroactively_ if such fraud had taken place. I didn’t read his initial post carefully. As an answer to AL’s question, my plan is a horrible idea. In fact, it sucks.
RHSwan @ #21
Seems on-topic to me… but I think you posted before the updates, which discuss, to some extent, the technicalities involved in the audit trail for Minnesota’s optical scan machines. It seems to me that in situations like this there are a number of explanations that sound perfectly innocent taken singly, such as the machine in a particular precinct having the clock incorrectly set, or trancription errors on the part of people involved in the process. But when they are not randomly distributed, things start to look worse.
If it is true that the corrections are all in Franken’s direction (and I have no knowledge as to whether or not that’s the case) I suppose one could still have an innocent explanation that the poll workers in Democratic precincts are uniformly less competent than those in Republican districts. Or, in this case, that people who live in districts that would vote overwhelmingly for a clown like Al Franken are more likely to be incompetent, while other Dem districts are competent. But as one stretches for such explanations, fraud starts to look like the parsimonious interpretation.
Agree that fraudulent voting would be trivial.
Lists of voters are obtainable (by political parties, for example).
I’ve done precinct walking where you hand out literature and see who is voting your way, so you can call election day and be sure they come out.
When I did this, there were always, minimum, 10% wrong entries. Stuff like no one home but the name on the mailbox doesn’t match, or someone home but says the name you have doesn’t live there.
Hey, a lot of us have lives…and full time jobs…and moral values. But there are also plenty of Democrats out there who are likely taking advantage of this situation 🙂
The most certain way to eliminate the possibility of voter fraud would be massive Republican voter fraud. Easy to have a good chuckle at Chicago/Philly dead voters, Mickey Mouse, snowbird double voters, etc so long as it all works in favor of the “good guys”. Let 500 ballots discovered days after an election win the Washington statehouse for Rossi, or let dozens of recount “mistakes” all enable Coleman to overtake Franken, and it would be a national catastrophe. Something Would Have To Be Done.
_”In places in the South, if you have white cops start going through black neighborhoods telling people that a vote came out of this address and we’re just trying to reach this individual…._”
Why use cops? We’re not looking for the fraudsters here, pretty much by definition if you actually FIND somebody in this scenario, they’re either an innocent voter, or an innocent victim of ID fraud as part of the ballot fraud. I’d use integrated teams of college students.
It IS somewhat charged that, if you’re looking for areas of political mono-culture (96-97% Democratic this election!) where anomalous numbers of straight ticket absentee ballots are cast, and the counts come in _after precincts in the rest of the state have reported_ (So the fraudsters would know how many fraudulent ballots to inject into the count to carry the state.) you’re pretty much looking at urban black precincts. Republicans aren’t being irrational in suspecting ballot fraud in these places, they show essentially all of the objective markers that would cause a completely impartial observer to suspect fraud.
_”Take the registration list, and remove all the registrations that didn’t vote (20-40%).”_
I’m with you so far. We’re looking for _ballot_ fraud, so if there are no ballots, we’re not interested.
_”Then you remove name logged in driver’s licenses (cut another 90%). Then you check the remaining identities against credit reports, public utilities and tax data.”_
You lost me here: It’s perfectly possible to file a fraudulent registration, and cast a fraudulent vote, in the name of somebody who really does exist. And not terribly difficult to compile a list of people who qualify to register, but don’t bother. If you’re an election official doing this, you just skip the step of mailing out the ballot, so that the innocent non-voter never knows somebody is voting in their name.
It doesnt really matter what the system is if you don’t trust the people executing it. I don’t know how to correct it, but the practice of using partisan political operatives as polling judges just seems nuts to me. Particularly in single party districts where there may not even be representatives from the other side, or enough to be effective.
Here are some common sense reforms i would like to see:
1.Photo ID, issued by the government for free, required to vote.
2.A national voter registry to can tag voters registered in multiple states. I would wager as far as unsystematic fraud goes, multi-district and multi-state voting is by far the biggest method.
3.Detailed forensic reviews of random polling places in every state, such as was done in Chicago in the early 80s. Contact voters to make sure they voted. Employ professionals to compare signature cards. Match up every vote to a real person or determine why you cant. Its either fraud or a flaw in the system, and either way should be dealt with.
To have one guy or even a hundred register is ridiculous and but to VOTE 100 times is such an outlier in any system as to not be worth mentioning. I can only continue to assume that these are Republican Party talking points to motivate a base they do nothing for except make feel good. You can not argue they want nothing from the government federal state or local for they would have nothing; roads, clean water, sewers and sanitation systems, fire departments-voluntary or paid hydrants have to match systems and the volunteer fire dept does not put them in, military, police, schools-cirriculum has too be decided by someone; even home schoolers use a guide.
As to solutions for registration I would be the first person to sign up for a national identity card; stop the howling of socialist intrusion. Most people would as well to stop corruption and the kind of rank stupidity and indifference that allow one person to register 100X. I know that the Republican Party would be the first to vote against it as it stops their ability to pick off voters for their cause based on a perceived slight. A mandatory registration base that big and documented would force the party to appeal to a wider group of potential voters not smaller. Areal threat to those in the America Gov Palin and Sen John McCain could not pedal.
_”an outlier in any system as to not be worth mentioning.”_
And the stinky stuff they put in the gas lines is only a minor impurity, but when it hits your nose, you know you’ve got a leak. The point of the outrageously obvious cases isn’t that they’re common, it’s that _if this can happen, what AREN’T we detecting?_
Brett
This isn’t a case of gas being detected w/ a bad scent. Nor have you eliminated the problem of outlier. I am the first one to go for a national registration card which would. Did you even read Mark B’s post?
As I point out people like you do not want one because you would be got w/ the stinky hands i.e. to many minorities registered against your party which has offered them nothing but hatred. “We people whom grow the food, work in the factories, fight our wars”. You would have to offer them something besides saying your not an American.
I realise that each state can set up its own system of voting, and this may be part of the problem. However, I cannot understand how anyone can accept the lack of safeguards.
PS:
I should say that I just read that in Minnesota one of persons working at the voting center said she had just found an extra 30 ballots in her car? The precinct is majority Democratic so this probably means they have fo0und 30 ballots for Frankin.
I thought ballots would be transported in locked boxes. How can anyone just find an extra 30 ballots in her car?
The question is not how they can find 30 ballots in their car; The question is how they can find 30 ballots in their car, _and expect to be taken seriously_. The last batch was 100 ballots, and 100 percent of them were Democratic. _The vote in that precinct wasn’t one sided enough to make that statistically plausible_, but the ballots got added into the count anyway. Partisan election administration is the reason people can do this sort of thing, and expect to get away with it.
Oh, and Robert? Ballot fraud is the only thing that was sufficient to get me to come onboard for a national ID system. Let’s go for it.
They will be counted. Rememember King County in Washingtin State. They were finding ballots everywhere for at least two weeks after the election and Gregoire won by those number of votes.
Er, no offense to anyone…
But how do we know that these “wide margins” aren’t because of voter fraud?
Here is how vote fraud is done when the election judges belong to your machine.
1. Make a list of dead voters and phony voters
2. During the day, when you clean the machine between voters, cast a vote. Keep voting until all the dead and phonies have voted.
3. mark the cards for the dead and phonies
Counter Measure: remove the cards for dead people. Go visit all new registrants (use volunteers who will be very hard to find in hostile precincts) and remove phony cards.
Here is how vote fraud is done when there are hostile election judges present
1. Have the hostile judges removed by police (as was done in Phily).
2. Procede as outlined above.
Here is how vote fraud is done when there are hostile election judges present who cannot be removed
1. make list
2. Find filled in ballots in trunk of your car 2 days after polls closed. This was done in Minnesota Coleman/Franken race)
http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/senate/34221344.html?elr=KArks8c7PaP3E77K_3c::D3aDhUec7PaP3E77K_0c::D3aDhUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiU
Here is how vote fraud is done when the judges can’t be trusted to be dishonest
1. Get the same name registered in 10 different preceints. Do this for 100 people.
2. Go to Homeless center and get 100 guys. Tell each guy the name he will use (these guys have bad memories so they can only handle one name)
3. Put them in bus drive them to each preceint and have them vote. Remember, no IDs necessary.
Solution: make IDs required. Enter all ID numbers in computer system and check for multiple usage.
Great post Sol (#36)
Only think I would add to that is that many areas offer the ability to see the status of your registration. When I checked in Chicago to see where my polling place was, I was also able to see that my registration was active.
If you:
1. Overwhelm the system with fake registrations and assume a number of them are stopped, you also have to assume that the officials don’t catch all of them. In some cases, the local officials may not wish to find all of them.
2. Prior to the election check them online to see if they are valid – send volunteers to polling site to enter vote. Most won’t require an ID (and sometimes even if they need an ID, the election checkers won’t bother to check).
3. Repeat until you’ve won.
As Sol said: make ID’s required, enter all ID’s into a computer system and check for multiple usage.
One additional solution: Minimum 10 year trip to the Federal Penitentary for votor fraud, no chance of parole. I don’t imagine your average college kid will risk 10 years for the sake of any candidate.
So ACORN claims. However, former ACORN employees have testified that they do no such thing, and that their modus operandi is to deliberately flood the election officials with hundreds of bogus registration forms.
Now why do you suppose they would do that? So that they can obey the law????
Sure.
And can anyone point to the law they claim compels them to submit these forms regardless of their veracity? Or do we just take ACORN’s word for that as well?
Sorry. My bullshit meter just blew up.
The ACORN people are a bunch of lying sacks of shit who are deliberately trying to introduce doubt in the electorate’s mind as to the trustworthiness of the election process. They should all be jailed and the key thrown away.
My wife got a jury summons from the state she grew up in (based on voter registrations–the form actually said that). She had registered to vote in each of the states she lived in since then (3 total as she moved around within about 15 years). Maybe having the registrars notify previous states to take the “zombies” off the lists would help. You’d be pretty torqued if your banking info didn’t follow you, Social Security info, car registrations, drivers licenses, etc. wouldn’t you? I suppose that it wouldn’t have been hard for her to cast 4 separate votes to George W. in 2000 (including one in Florida) if she’d simply asked for an absentee ballot, after all she *was* still on the rolls, more than a decade after she left… Your tax dollars at work, I suppose.
And why does it always seem to be Democrats doing this? And barely squeaking out elections even when they do? Things that make you go “Hmm.”
Solution: Purple finger ink.
Once a voter has inked his finger and voted, he can’t vote again until the inked skin sloughs off long after the election.
If we start with your assumption that the margins of victory were great enough to be outside the plausible extent of fraud, then looking at this election, in my opinion, will likely reveal very little fraud. As someone else said, if it isn’t close you can’t steal it. I believe that zombie voters and “extra” ballots are more likely held in reserve just in case you get a situation like Minnesota, when mysterious “found” votes get trickled into the system. As long as the count keeps changing the argument is made to count again, allowing another chance to “find” a few more ballots. I have no doubt this is what Gore was trying to do in 2000.
1) A national ID tied to a non-meaningful number generated by the database. This allows you to verify the existence of a voter without revealing their identity. The national database is crosschecked against the social security rolls. If a person is deceased, the voter is flagged as deceased but not removed until an official death certificate is presented. States can report but only feds can purge.
2) Require states to check voter rolls semi-annually, against the national database, using the non-meaningful number. If the voter is registered in two states, the database flags that voter as potential fraud and the states investigate until it’s resolved. Until it’s resolved, only provisional ballots will be accepted for that voter.
3) Disallow the purging of voter rolls immediately preceding an election (within 90 days),and require all states to accept provisional ballots for those voters not verified before the cutoff.
4) Check all provisional ballots against the database and only accept the ballot if the voter’s existence and single registration is confirmed. Most elections are not close enough that it matters. When they are, it matters a great deal. If provisional ballots turn out to be attempts at fraud, flag the voter ID and watch for another attempt in the upcoming election. If it shows up, arrest the “voter” on the spot and march them straight to jail Mandatory sentences of two years in federal lockup for a first offense, 4 years for a second offense and two additional years for each additional offense.
The law is not the same in every state, I do know in my state, Florida, ACORN has the ability to discard any registration form that they have reason to believe is fraudulant. There are 6-8 other states with similar laws. I do have a question…why doesn’t the Republican party create an organization to counter ACORN. It’s time to take the gloves off, if they keep showing up to a gun fight armed with a knive, we’re going to see more of the same results.
In the presidential election last week, I voted by paper ballot. The poll officials called out my name and gave me a piece of paper. I took the paper to a voting booth, where I blackened little ovals to designate the candidates of my choice.
Three things were good about that voting system: (A) The paper. (B) The booth. (C) The fact that officials called out my name just in case anyone else there might have thought I was pretending to be someone I’m not.
For the future, I think paper ballots, which can be read by computers, are the way to go. Paper leaves a real trail, not a virtual trail. Paper is a good way to verify electronic vote tallies, which can be ruined by one computer glitch or by computer sabotage.
At least two more things are needed to help guarantee that each American is voting his or her conscience, and that each American is exercising the vote no more than once in each contest.
(1) End voting by mail. Of course, that means severely limiting absentee ballots, too. Why do we suppose we used to go to all those lengths to keep other adults away from us when we voted? If we are to have democratic elections, the ballots must be secret. Voting by mail guarantees corrupt elections. With a secret ballot, Mr. Bad Candidate can pay a voter to vote for him, but that voter still can vote his conscience, in the booth. With mailed-in votes, Mr. Bad Candidate can insist that the voter fill out the ballot as he watches, and then pay. Too many dreamers have accepted voting by mail as some kind of progress. It’s just the opposite. It’s the recipe for a banana republic.
(2) Place video cameras at every polling station. Record the face of everyone who enters. Don’t place the cameras so close to the voting booths that we’d know the exact order of the voters’ votes, but make sure we have on record the face of every voter. Polling places are public. Voters have no expectation that their faces will be private on Election Day. More importantly, a video record will allow election officials to cross-check any claims that some who have cast votes are ineligible to vote, or that some have voted more than once. For poll officials who can’t recognize every face, the video ultimately would be the equivalent of shouting out my name in front of people who might know whether I am who I say I am.
The law is one person, one vote. Americans have died for that right. Let’s stop treating it as a plaything. If every American’s vote is sacred, let’s treat voting with much more care.
Thank you Dean @ #35. I’ve been wondering that too. Last election my feeling was “they didn’t manufacture enough votes to counter the republican turn out.” This year my feeling was that they did.
P.
Robert (#40) – I was thinking the exact same thing as I read through the comments. If it’s good enough for a new Iraqi democracy, it’s good enough for us.
The only problem is that it won’t stop fraud by absentee ballot…
You’ve missed the point. It’s not that fraudulent votes swung the election, it’s that they might have. Fraudulent votes are fraudulent. Wrong is wrong. I’ve seen the Republican Party and another organization, the name of which I will not state here, remain silent on principles. The silence is read as acquiescence, and the self-induced injury is life threatening.
Here is the simplest way to test for voter fraud: (Unfortunately, this test is presumably illegal, so I would advise against it.)
Register to vote by filling-in a postcard affidavit of registration in fake name. Mail it to the Registrar of Voters. When you get confirmation for the registration, sign up as a “permanent absentee voter.” When you get your next ballot in the mail, place it in the envelope provided, sign it with the same fake name and fake signature, and mail it back to the Registrar. In most counties, you can now use the Internet to confirm that your ballot was received and counted. There is your proof that we have a problem!
(To avoid changing the outcome of any election, you can leave the ballot blank or cast a vote for an uncontested candidate. That is still illegal, but arguably less immoral.)
I would like to see two types of reforms before the next election: 1) No 3rd party handling of voter registration forms or absentee ballots and 2) Allow poll workers to be recruited from a wider geographic area. Why should ACORN or other group be allowed to deliver stacks of voter registration forms to election officials? Why not require that the people who fill out the form deliver it to election officials in person or send it in a separate sealed envelope? Regarding poll workers, the problems seem to occur in areas where one political party dominates without enough potential poll workers for the other party. Imagine if surplus Republican volunteers from the outer suburbs could keep an eye on what happens in African American neighborhoods and surplus Democrat volunteers could drive out to watch the solidly Republican precincts.
Frank’s (#44) suggestion #1 immediately disenfranchises almost everyone serving elsewhere in the military, as well as those too ill or disabled to handle a personal visit to a polling place. Seems like overkill. To assume “absentee voters” take their ballots to “Bad Candidates” for instructions on how to fill them in is implausible but not impossible, however is about as likely to happen as a voter exactly following an “approved” list in marking a ballot in the voting booth. Seems about the same thing.
Like Frank, I also voted by paper ballot, just as I’ve done in the past five national elections, and it was again absentee. My name and address were pre-printed on the envelope, and I had to sign it with the same special signature I use for all elections. I don’t think absentee ballots, _per se_, are the problem.
A word about national ID cards. Easy to ask for, but extremely difficult to accomplish with any degree of accuracy and security. Have career experience with them, and there are unaddressed concerns that could boggle most minds.
Now about database name comparisons. Shouldn’t be as difficult or costly to do as is assumed here. Nothing is cheap, but this should be manageable within each states’ elections budget. Particularly if we get rid of the crap “machines”.
I love the idea of pre-announced random post-election in-depth forensic reviews of key precincts. With uncovered warranted prosecution assured. Could have a great impact on fraudsters.
I’m all behind this idea and id be willing to help, but we need to talk about a few things.
“Here”:http://www.heritage.org/Research/LegalIssues/lm23.cfm is a link to the last time the justice department did a comprehensive audit like we are discussing. It was done in Chicago in the early 80s and the US Attorney estimated that a _minimum of 100,000_ fraudulent _votes_ were cast. This is what the FBI discovered when they began their investigation:
_Soon after the investigation started, it became evident that this was not a case of isolated wrongdoÂing, but rather a case of extensive, substantial, and widespread fraud in precincts and wards throughÂout Chicago. The FBI investigators concluded that their regular tools—interviewing witnesses, obtainÂing documents, and using handwriting experts to analyze signatures on documents—would not be up to the task. After all, to conduct a complete investigation, they would have to review “virtually all of the 1,000,000 ballot applications submitted in the City of Chicago in the November election” as well as the voter lists maintained by the election board for all of Chicago’s 2,910 precincts (comprisÂing approximately 1.6 million voters) to check for the names of voters registered in more than one preÂcinct, as well as registered voters who were dead_
Now the computer for the first time became an invaluable tool in this process, and we can fairly ask if in the current computer age these types of fraud become impossible. The answer is no, for the simple reason that computers have to have data to reference, and no-one is tasked with making the cross references that would reveal a problem. Ever.
_To that end, the FBI and federal prosecutors obtained death records from the Bureau of Vital Statistics; local, state, and federal prison records; the national Social Security list; Immigration and Naturalization Service records on aliens; driver’s license records; and even utility (gas, electric, water, and telephone) records_
I cite this as a warning that THIS is the type of evaluation that is required. And much more:
_He convinced his supervisors to dedicate all of the agents in the FBI field office in Chicago for an entire week to nothing but reviewÂing all of Chicago’s voter registration cards and balÂlot applications.[23] So many signature comparisons were needed that the FBI flew in handwriting experts from its headquarters in Washington.[24] The Justice Department and the FBI have never concentrated that much manpower and resources, before or since, on investigating a voter fraud case._
_Teams of FBI agents were paired with Assistant United States Attorneys and assigned to investigate specific precincts, locating and talking to voters who had supposedly cast votes in the polling place._
This is a massive undertaking, and it really has to be done _at least_ at city wide levels to properly cross reference and draw meaningful conclusions. Statewide would be better. The amount of work is staggering, and not the place for clerks or amateurs.
But its probably irrelevant. No civilian organization has the authority (let alone the resources) to conduct such an investigation involving so much privileged information. Any attempt to do so would certainly be attacked as voter intimidation. Any attempt by the government itself would surely be attacked as voter intimidation as well. It might not be politically plausible for _the government_ to do this.
I don’t want to be a total naysayer, and i DO want to do something constructive, but given the above, what are our options?
49er (No. 50), I’m not suggesting elimination of the absentee ballot. I’m saying severely restrict it, the way it once was restricted. That means limiting it to only truly sick voters, troops a long way from home, and to others overseas on official government business.
Recently, we’ve seen a careless shift toward allowing people who are not absent or ill to vote by absentee ballot. That is an unwarranted breach of the secret ballot. Absentee ballots should be the rare exception, not the rule.
Talk about Zombies: In line behind me at the poll was an older Mom and her adult, obviously retarded, grown son. He could not sign his name or read. Mom asked to help him with his ballot, but a poll worker graciously insisted on helping instead. I overheard the talk as they were next to me at the voting machines. Of all the issues on our Kansas ballot (quite a few), he only new one candidate- OBAMA. Obama got votes for President, Senator (KS), District attorney, County commissioner, and State rep and State senate. THANKS FOR YOUR RESPONSIBLE ACTIONS MOM.
Mark, I didn’t see a link; I’d love to see the source materials on that.
A.L.
#51 – Mark – that is why I suggested a national database with a non-meaningful number representing each voter. That would allow citizens to do research on voting without exposing any personal or private information. E.g. if voter ID # 12682398 shows up in two places as having voted, you clearly have fraud. You then report it to the FBI and they investigate.
You’re right that the job is massive. That’s why the resources of the internet are required to sift through the pile and expose the fraud. Once that’s done, the government can get involved and do the investigative work to obtain indictments and convictions. But we all suffer when voting fraud goes unreported and unpunished.
Here you go A.L.:
“Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire”:http://www.heritage.org/Research/LegalIssues/lm23.cfm
Its from a paper by Heritage Foundation, all the original documentation is cited.
As a suggestion- I would pick a place like Lake County Indiana or St Louis for an investigation like this. These are hard fought states that have had irregularities in recent elections. They are small enough to be manageable but large enough to draw meaningful conclusions. Ideally you would do a whole state like Indiana or Missouri.
More shenanigans up in “Minnesota,”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122644940271419147.html lest this subject falls back off the radar. This nonsense of ‘finding’ ballots in peoples cars etc has got to stop.