Vote fraud is not imaginary --- yet Dems keep trying to dismiss it

If you Google “vote fraud,” you’ll find that most of the stories are about Democrats committing it, or denying it exists.

Fourteen percent of non-citizens in the United States in 2008 were registered to vote and about 6 percent voted indicates data collected by Harvard’s Cooperative Congressional Election Study, according to a study by Jesse Richman and David Earnest, professors at Old Dominion University.

Since at least 11 million non-citizens were here then, it could be that as many as 660,000 voted. That’s about one half of one percent of the votes cast — nearly equivalent to the 739,000 votes Ralph Nader got.

Non-citizens had no impact on the presidential race. But their votes probably elected Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., and may have elected Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska.

“Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed (to pass Obamacare),” wrote Messrs. Richman and Earnest. This year, illegal votes may have re-elected Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., maybe also Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.

An audit of 10,000 voters by the state Board of Elections in North Carolina last month found 14 percent likely were ineligible. About 24 million voter registrations nationwide “are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate,” the Pew Charitable Trusts found in a 2012 study. More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are still listed on voter rolls, Pew found. About 2.75 million people are registered to vote in more than one state — 70,000 are registered in three or more.

During the New York mayoral election last year, undercover operatives for the city’s Department of Investigations pretending to be people who had died, moved out of town or were in prison went to 63 polling places and were allowed to vote in 61.

Guerrilla videographer James O’Keefe recorded Democrats and allied groups in Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia apparently offering to help register those they knew were ineligible.

Voting machines in Illinois, Maryland and Virginia in some cases recorded votes cast for GOP candidates as votes for their opponents. These were “calibration errors,” officials said. Oddly, they seemed to occur only where election officials were Democrats, and I saw no reports of “calibration errors” changing a Democratic vote to Republican.

The tsunami of fraud exposes as false and vile the Democrat charge that ballot security measures are “voter suppression.” The only suppression going on is by thugs who intimidate Republican poll watchers.

It’s legitimate to debate who ought to be eligible to vote. But there should be no question that only those eligible should be permitted to vote.

There isn’t for most Americans. You should have to show photo ID to vote, said 67 percent in a YouGov poll last year, including 65 percent of Hispanics and 59 percent of blacks.

The claim by Democrats that requiring a photo ID to vote hurts minorities disproportionately is as false as their claim vote fraud is a “myth.” After Indiana, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas passed photo ID laws, minority turnout rose in those states.

Reform should make voting easier, cheating harder. Democrats design “reforms” to make cheating easier.

Democrat vote fraud is not new. Certain precincts in Philadelphia have reported more votes than voters who signed in. “My dad split his ticket until he died,” said a friend in Chicago. “Since then, he votes straight Democrat.”

Because fraud is epidemic, restoring ballot integrity must be a priority for Congress and in the 24 states where the governor is a Republican and the GOP controls the legislature.

More states should require photo ID. Punishment for fraud should be made more severe. To provide time to check the bona fides of new voters, registration should close 30 days before an election. Using paper ballots would cut down “calibration errors.”

Most important is to enforce the provision in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires states to purge the ineligible from voter rolls.

Republicans everywhere must scream bloody murder about vote fraud. It is wrong to cheat, even most Democrat voters think. But few Americans are aware of how much of it is going on.

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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.