The threat from voter fraud
October 23, 2008| By David Talbot
"ACORN is a symbol of just how vulnerable our election system is to fraud," Wall Street Journal columnist and leading expert on voter fraud John Fund said Monday at The Heritage Foundation.
Fund, whose revised book Stealing Elections covers voter registration shenanigans by ACORN and similar groups, told the audience in Lehrman Auditorium that disasters loom if this fraud go unchecked.
The 2000 presidential election fundamentally challenged the legitimacy and credibility of incoming Presidents, he said, and threatened to replace the "margin of victory" with the "margin of litigation." It was a warning, he added, upon which we need to act.
» Heritage's Hans von Spakovsky has appeared on television several times recently to explain the dangers of voter fraud. Watch online: on Fox News, again on Fox News, and on CNN.
The biggest problem our elections face today is absentee voting, Fund said. Absentee ballots are extremely prone to fraud and make the actual election into a hectic month-long process. It is laughable, Fund said, that some concerned citizens will raise a ruckus over the difficulties with voting machines but trust the United States Postal Service implicitly. Besides, early voting doesn't even raise turnout.
Other problems include strong-arm tactics by groups like ACORN, he continued. Despite their perennial promises to clean up their act, ACORN is now under investigation in 14 states for potential voter fraud. In the past decade, ACORN employees have been convicted of voter fraud in Seattle, Kansas City and St. Louis.
Then there's outright bungling. "Sometimes you can't tell where the incompetence ends and the fraud begins," Fund said. He pointed to Washington State's 2004 gubernatorial election, which was won by fewer than 140 votes. In that case, new batches of uncounted ballots were discovered 16 times, and more than 140 deceased voters managed to cast a ballot in that election. (Fund called this "a case of representation without respiration.")
In the current election, both candidates have lined up teams of lawyers ready to litigate anything but a landslide. So what can be done to avoid election meltdown?
Fund outlined a number of practical recommendations.
- Education. We need to spread the message that fraud and intimidation are unacceptable.
- Identifying Fraud. Voters need to have access to hotlines where they can report discrepancies, and prosecutors need to take voting fraud more seriously.
- Improved Voting Machines. We can do a lot to improve our voting machines, said Fund. Consider how much more we trust an ATM than a voting machine. If we had voting machines more like ATMs, that would solve many problems.
- New Poll Workers. The average poll worker today is over 65 years old. This job can be done by trained high school students.
Voting is the heart of democracy, and democracy depends on voters accepting the results of the election. When voting fraud runs rampant and unchecked, the power of the government, only just if derived from the consent of the governed, becomes unjust.
