Our ability to legally vote and ensure that our vote is properly counted is one of the underpinnings of a successful democracy, right up there with freedom of speech.
Is voter fraud a problem in the United States? Yes, even a small amount is a problem that should be solved. How prevalent is voter fraud? The correct answer is, no one knows because fraud is a crime and folks don’t go around advertising that they are breaking the law. We have choices: do nothing, take a chance that it might get exponentially worse or try to fix it.
Voter fraud is in the news right now because democrats are clamoring for a dramatic change from voting booths to mail-in voting. Their argument is that because of COVID-19 it will not be safe to assemble and vote in November.
Is the pandemic a good enough excuse to take a chance and suddenly shift the nation to mail-in voting? Good question, let’s take a snapshot of the current problem and then you decide.
California: It has been determined that 1.5 million individuals were registered even though they no longer were eligible to vote. Recently California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an order ensuring that every registered voter will receive a mail-in ballot this fall.
Disregarding several warnings, Mr. Davis was convicted of registering his four dogs and his deceased father to vote. Or take Mr. Lerma, an illegal alien from Mexico who voted multiple times under a false identity. Mr. Hall was involved in a scheme with eight other individuals where they solicited hundreds of false and/or forged signatures on voter registration forms by offering homeless people $1 and/or cigarettes for their participation.
Other cases out of California include individuals who forged the signatures of voters, being paid $5 per signature.
Voter registration rolls are notoriously inaccurate and out of date, containing the names of voters who are deceased, have moved, or otherwise have become ineligible.
Having thousands of ballots arriving in the mail for individuals who no longer reside at a registered address risks those ballots being stolen and voted.
North Carolina: In 2018 in the 9th Congressional District race was overturned because of illegal vote harvesting that included altering and forging absentee ballots.
Oregon: A survey of one county found that five percent of registered voters admitted that other people marked their ballots, and 2.4% said someone else signed their ballots. It is suspected the actual number was much higher, given that most people would not want to admit being a party to a crime. Likely tens of thousands of mail-in ballots are being cast in Oregon by individuals other than the registered voter.
New Jersey: A candidate bribed voters with $50 payments for mail-in ballots.
The Election Assistance Commission found that 28.3 million ballots in federal elections between 2012 and 2018 were lost or disappeared in the mail.
Virginia: An investigation found 592 examples where registrants were simultaneously registered in another state. There are about 11,600 dead people on Virginia’s voter rolls, all of whom would receive mail-in ballots if an election were held by mail.
New Mexico: The Public Interest Legal Foundation found more than 3,000 individuals registered multiple times; 1,700 registrants who are dead; 1,500 voters aged 100 or above, 64 of whom are over 120 years old. All of these supposed voters would receive mail-in ballots.
These are just a few examples of the ongoing voter fraud in America. Collecting these examples just took a few minutes on Google. Imagine if we went state by state and searched out voting and voter registration investigations. Absentee and mail-in ballots are the tools of choice of election fraudsters because they can operate outside the supervision of election officials, making it easier to steal, forge, or alter ballots, as well as to intimidate voters.
Ballot harvesting is the collecting and submitting of absentee or mail-in ballots by volunteers. In California, campaigns can legally go door-to-door as often as they want and offer to collect the filled-out ballots and drop them off to election officials. Fraud comes into play when one questions the collector’s intentions. Could they be motivated to NOT deliver the ballots once they are collected?
Going entirely to by-mail elections would unwisely endanger the security and integrity of the election process, particularly if officials automatically mail absentee ballots to all registered voters without a signed, authenticated request from each voter.
These cases demonstrate that significant election fraud does exist and, unchecked, can compromise the integrity of the entire election process.
Speaker Pelosi’s $3 trillion Heroes Act, recently passed by the House says that states “shall permit a voter to designate any person to return a voted and sealed absentee ballot.” In effect it would impose ballot harvesting nationwide.
We should not revamp our voting system with a knee-jerk change/solution just because of the potential for COVID-19 still to be an issue in November.
Conclusions: One, voter fraud in America is a problem. Two, with a concerted effort the voter rolls and voting procedures can get cleaned up with a little common sense and attention to detail. Three, moving the nation to mail-in voting, as a reaction to the pandemic, does not solve the kind of problems enumerated above and could well make things a lot worse leading to many contentious election results like the 9th District in North Carolina in 2018.
Here is what could/should happen leading up to the November elections:
- Election fraud is a crime. The US Attorney General should put pressure on all of the State Attorneys General to get involved and clean up the mess. State election officials appear unable or uninterested in doing so.
- Ban ballot harvesting across the nation. For those who cannot go to the voting stations (military, infirmed, etc.) tighten the requirement for a signed request for an absentee ballot and do the entire process with specific due dates well ahead of election day.
- If we are concerned about social distancing requirements, extend voting over three days to alleviate the crush and long lines. How could that happen?
Our Constitution (article 1, section 4) specifically gives congress the power to regulate the, “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections.” In 1845 congress passed a federal law designating, “the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November” as the time for Federal elections. Easy to change it with a two-sentence law passed by Congress. “The 2020 national elections will be held 1-3 November, 2020. No results will be released until every voting station in the nation is closed.” Period.
In the 2016 presidential election there were about 240 million eligible voters. Only 58% of them voted. Pathetic. Extending the voting period from about 12 hours to 3 days could hopefully elicit more interest and a greater turnout.
4.This is the 21st century, everyone needs a valid ID. It is about time we stopped the nonsense of arguing about voter ID. The state DMV facilities could easily provide a valid ID for those few legal citizens who do not have a driver’s license, a passport or a federal ID. Remember, there are over 20 million illegal aliens in the US and many of them already vote illegally.
Lieutenant General, US Army retired, Marvin L. Covault is the author of Vision to Execution, a book for leaders.