Sunday, April 13, 2014

Vote fraud is real and far too extensive

EDITORIAL: North Carolina answers Democrats’ question ‘What vote fraud?’


It’s an article of the faith of the Democrats that voter fraud is nothing to worry about because it never happens. Kim Strach, the North Carolina director of elections, has living proof — and some dead proof — otherwise.
She has identified 35,750 persons who voted in North Carolina sharing a name, birth date and Social Security number with someone who voted in another state in 2012. Another 81 North Carolinians voted after they died. Ghosts have no constitutional rights, not yet, but Barack Obama and the Democrats think rigor mortis need not keep voters from practicing good citizenship.
President Obama nevertheless insists on looking the other way when voter fraud lies all about him. Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in Houston last week, Mr. Obama criticized “active efforts to deter people from voting.”
“The idea that you’d purposely try to prevent people from voting?” Mr. Obama asked, and answered: “Un-American.”
Fraudulent ballots cast cancel valid votes, but only a tiny fraction of 1 percent of the cases cited in the North Carolina audit were referred for investigation and prosecution, as reported by WNCN-TV in Raleigh. The North Carolina figures were compiled as a result of an interstate cross-check effort among 28 states. Such figures show Gov. Pat McCrory and the Republican-majority North Carolina legislature were right to enact a voter photo-ID law, reduce early voting and end same-day registration. These abuses of Election Day invite fraud.
The Republican National Lawyers Association last week urged state and local election officials across the country to adopt similar reforms “so there are fewer restrictions in sharing voter registration, voter history and Department of Motor Vehicles data with other states to improve the accuracy of the voter rolls and prevent double-voting.”
The lawyers’ recommendation follows the lead of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, which in January urged increased maintenance of accurate voter lists to help reduce voter lines and waiting times. The commission was co-chaired by Bob Bauer, Mr. Obama’s former White House counsel and the same Bob Bauer whose law firm last summer mounted an unsuccessful legal battle on behalf of Virginia Democrats to bar the state of Virginia from purging the names of more than 30,000 who have moved, or who have died, from its voter rolls.
A late education is better than no education at all.

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