Voter Fraud: An Existential Threat to America

Written by James Simpson, Accuracy in Media

It is difficult to describe the enormity of the crime being committed by the Obama administration and their Democratic allies. They flagrantly flout the law, while simultaneously turning it into a weapon against political opponents, use government agencies to target innocent Americans, attempt to create legal voters through amnesty, and undermine voter integrity measures to facilitate vote fraud, while denying it even exists. In short, they are corrupting the entire process.

Thus, it is fitting to begin this report by recounting a story of deliberate, blatant official voter fraud. This April 17, the Illinois House Executive Committee voted to authorize $100 million to construct President Obama’s future presidential library and museum in Chicago. AP reported that the Committee voted “unanimously,” 9-0 to support the plan. The report was false. Only four of the 11 Committee members were in attendance—all Democrats. They did not even have a quorum. Furthermore, this was supposed to be a “subject matter only” hearing, i.e., entailing no votes. No matter; the legislators simply made up the results—even counting absent Republicans as “yes” votes. Republican State Representative Ed Sullivan observed, “In this case they didn’t even care to change the rules; they just flat out broke them.”

Motor Voter

The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), also known as “motor voter,” promotes easy voter registration at motor vehicle, welfare and other state and local government offices. Voters can apply in person or by mail, and, until a recent court ruling, the federal application required no proof of citizenship. NVRA also dictates voter roll maintenance, but actually makes it more difficult by requiring an exhaustive procedure that takes a minimum of four, and sometimes more than eight years, before a deceased or otherwise ineligible voter can be removed.

As a result, nationwide, voter rolls are a shambles. According to a Pew report, approximately 24 million voter registrations nationally are either invalid or inaccurate, including about 1.8 million deceased individuals and 2.75 million multi-state duplicates.

The NVRA was authored by socialists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, and many believe it was deliberately constructed to pave the way for ACORN-style massive registration fraud. The pair is notorious for the Cloward/Piven Crisis Strategy—a plan to overwhelm government with demands for welfare spending, thereby leading to systemic crisis. Cloward and Piven helped launchACORN to advance their strategy.

They also had other intentions for those burgeoning welfare rolls. “If organizers can deliver millions of dollars in cash benefits to the ghetto masses,” they wrote, “it seems reasonable to expect that the masses will deliver their loyalties to their benefactors.” Cloward and Piven developed the Motor Voter idea to simplify voter registration for this demographic. In 1993, it became law. Successive NRVA lawsuits have forced state agencies to become de facto taxpayer-funded voter registration drives.

Through its criminal activities, massive voter registration fraud and numerous convictions, ACORN made voter fraud national news. Prodded, and in some cases sued by activists, state legislatures began cleaning voter rolls and enacting ballot integrity measures like photo voter ID.

Voter Suppression

Democrats responded by executing a nationwide propaganda campaign of contrived outrage to deliver one relentless message: widespread voter fraud is a myth created by racist Republicans to justify voter ID and other laws thatsuppress the minority vote. MSNBC even called it a war on voting.

This President has proven over and over, however, that Democrats lie, and the Obama administration has institutionalized the practice. As Robert Popper writes in The Wall Street Journal:

In an April 11 speech to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, President Obama recited statistics purporting to show that voter fraud was extremely rare. The “real voter fraud,” he said, “is people who try to deny our rights by making bogus arguments about voter fraud.”

Popper responds, “These arguments themselves are bogus.”

And of course he’s right. While they deny, obfuscate and attack, Democrats don’t even bother to hide their true intentions. In an event that can only be described asbad optics for the President, Sharpton’s NAN had just hosted a “Welcome Home Party” for serial convicted vote fraudster Melowese Richardson. After servingonly eight months of a five year sentence for her crimes, Richardson was celebrated by Sharpton as a conquering hero.

Voter Fraud as Reparations

Democrats’ attitude toward voter fraud is the voting version of reparations for slavery. Some Democrats have even said that because minorities and the poor have little influence, “extraordinary measures (for example, stretching the absentee ballot or registration rules) are required to compensate.” Democrat election officials do this all the time, and a form of it has actually become official Justice Department policy in its effort to boost Hispanic representation.

Hispanic voters in Port Chester, New York were allowed to use something called “cumulative voting” in an election for village trustees. There were six trustee seats and Hispanics were allowed to cast six votes in any way they chose, for example, casting one vote for each of six candidates or all six for one candidate. Cumulative voting has also been used to elect a school board in Amarillo, Texas, the county commission in Chilton County, Alabama, and the city council in Peoria, Illinois.

Having rationalized the moral high ground with their “voter suppression” charge—Democrats go on the warpath. In recent years this has involved lawsuits, organized slander and a nationwide campaign to resist election reform. Under the Obama presidency, it has also included using federal agencies to attack private citizens and organizations.

IRS Targeting of Conservatives

In 2010, homemaker and small business owner, Catherine Engelbrecht, foundedTrue the Vote (TTV), an organization dedicated to combating vote fraud. The group’s experience at the hand of government has become emblematic of the Obama administration’s despotic nature.

Catherine Engelbrecht’s gripping congressional testimony:

AIM interviewed Mrs. Engelbrecht for this article. Read the rest of her story here (PDF).

The travails of TTV are but one example of hundreds of conservative and tea party non-profits the IRS deliberately targeted in the run-up to the 2012 election. For example, the Ohio Liberty Council submitted their application on June 30, 2010. They received the first IRS answer in January 2012. It asked extensive questions about every single event they held and planned to hold, the people in their groups, their qualifications, speakers, publications, websites, Facebook pages and more. The IRS demanded they respond in two weeks.

In 2013, a Treasury Inspector General report stated that as of December 2012, 160 organizations had been waiting between 206 and 1,138 days. The IRS alsosecretly drafted new regulations to restrict conservative organizations. And while Obama and congressional Democrats feigned outrage, it was their idea to target conservatives. Many conservatives are still awaiting answers. Most recently, it has been revealed that a high level DOJ official asked the IRS to consider criminal investigations of conservative groups. No liberal group has been subject to such abuse.

So who is doing the suppressing? By thwarting efforts to clean up the voting process, Obama and the Democrats are suppressing every single legitimate vote stolen by voter fraud. By cheating conservatives of their ability to organize and communicate with the voting public, Obama’s IRS is denying their rights to free speech. By denying conservatives’ right to educate the public, for example, regarding candidates’ records on Obamacare, the IRS is preventing voters from being informed. Obama and the Democrats are not battling voter suppression, they have institutionalized it.

Crosscheck Program

In 2005, the Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri Secretaries of State agreed to initiate a program called “Crosscheck.” Participating states provide voter data for comparison with voter rolls in other states. One can compare first name, last and date of birth, vote history, and when states provide it, the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number. This can uncover duplicate registrations, and, potentially, voter fraud. Starting with only those four states, the Crosscheck program has now grown to 28.

The numbers of potential duplicate registrations are astronomical, about 3.5 million for the participating 28 states, but the data must be evaluated with caution. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach states that surprisingly, there aremany Americans with an identical first name, last name and date of birth (DOB).[1] Election lawyer J. Christian Adams also warns that voter records are notorious for data entry errors.[2] Still, individual Crosscheck states have found striking results worthy of closer scrutiny. North Carolina’s State Board of Elections (SBOE) analyzed Crosscheck data for 2012 and found:

• 765 voters with matching first and last name, DOB and last four digits of SSN registered in NC and another state, and voted in both.
• 35,750 voters with the same first and last name and DOB registered in NC and another state and voted in both. (This includes data from states that do not provide SSN info.). Approximately one-third (11,560) came from border states.
• 155,692 voters with the same first and last name, DOB and last four digits of SSN registered in NC and another state—and the latest date of registration or voter activity was not in NC.

SBOE Director Kim Strach warned against reading too much into the crosscheck numbers yet. The SBOE intends to examine each record individually. Separately, the SBOE also revealed:

• 50,000 new death records not previously provided to SBOE
• 13,416 deceased voters on the rolls in October 2013
• 81 deceased voters that had voter activity after they died

Other groups have explored voter rolls and found numerous problems. TheVirginia Voters Alliance worked with Election Integrity Maryland and found44,000 registration matches. The group also found 31,000 dead voters on the Virginia rolls. The North Carolina Voter Integrity Project handed over 20,000 voters with invalid addresses to the SBOE, and identified 5,167 dual registrations in Florida, of which at least 147 appear to be “either a victim or perpetrator” of voter fraud. In 2013, Kansas found 484 potential double voters through crosscheck. Twenty-one were referred for prosecution.

Double voting is only one explanation for dual votes, however, and perhaps not the main one. Susan Myrick of North Carolina’s Civitas Institute, a veteran elections official, has long believed that vote thieves access the voter database and commit vote fraud using names of inactive voters. Vote officials could never prove it before, but now Crosscheck provides a methodology.

Out-of-State Voters

Democrats now openly say “vote where your vote will count,” i.e., if you live in a dark red or blue state, your vote is wasted; go vote in a swing state. However, in order to do so legally, one must establish residency in the target swing state. How does one establish residency where one does not actually live, or intend to live for any extended period?

A long time ago, the Left began calculating ways to do this. The most promising demographic was college students. They are reliably liberal, reliably malleable, and move temporarily in large numbers. In 1972, the ACLU’s New Hampshire chapter brought a class action suit in U.S. District Court on behalf of an out-of-state Dartmouth college student who was denied the right to vote in NH because he informed authorities he intended to leave NH upon graduation. The judge ruled that out-of-state students could vote in NH, as long as they were “domiciled” in NH.

Black’s Law Dictionary defines “Domicile” as “not for a mere special or temporary purpose, but with the present intention of making a permanent home, until some unexpected event shall occur to induce him to adopt some other permanent home.” Normally, your domicile is where you live permanently, where you are licensed to drive, where you pay taxes, are called for jury duty, etc. That is usually not a college dorm.

One can immediately see the irony in the judge’s ruling. For example, how can a student be classified as out-of-state for tuition purposes and yet “domiciled” in-state to vote? What about NH residents who go out-of-state to attend college?New Hampshire still considers them NH residents. This out-of-state condition is called “temporary absence.” Why then are out-of-state students attending school in NH not considered to be temporarily absent from their own home state, and thus ineligible to vote in NH?

Today, out-of-state students in all 50 states can vote wherever they attend college. This has created essentially two classes of voter. Laws vary, but in many states, students don’t have to meet usual residency requirements, like registering a car. Cloistered away on campus, students are largely insulated from state and local politics. They will bear no long-term consequence for the outcomes of those elections, yet their sheer numbers guarantee a heavy influence. For example, residents could be saddled with a tax-and-spend governor because students who will never feel the impact voted for that candidate.

This has been further facilitated by same day registration/voting.

Same Day Registration/Voting

Same day voting allows a person to register to vote, and then vote on the same day. Leftists love it because it simplifies the task of getting out the vote and makes verification difficult. Some states require photo ID and other supporting documentation to prove the registrant’s residence, but many do not. Some states check registrations later; many don’t bother.

Cloward and Piven wrote an exemption into the NVRA for states that allow same day voter/registration. This is a big incentive to avoid the NVRA’s arduous voter registration requirements, and is yet more proof of the law’s subversive goals.

New Hampshire Legalized Voter Fraud

New Hampshire is a same-day voting swing state bordering dark blue Massachusetts. New Hampshire Democrats have made a concerted effort to harvest the student vote. The Dartmouth poster below exhorts students to “Vote in the election here in NH where your vote will make a difference!” Another poster from the Sierra Club declares, “If you live in NH, even as a student, you can vote here.”

Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers Chairman Ed Naile is a former selectman, seasoned activist and veteran of voter fraud battles since 2000. Naile says that for years students would register and vote on the same day, and rescind their registration shortly afterward. This was investigated by the NH Attorney General in 2001. Below is a list of students who did this.

In 2010, Republicans captured a veto-proof majority in both houses of the NH state legislature. They passed a law forcing out-of-state students to become truly domiciled in NH before they could vote. The ACLU sued to neutralize the law for the 2012 election, locating a sympathetic judge who invented an entirely new and utterly fraudulent residence classification just for students: “mobile domiciliaries.” It was likely conceived by the ACLU to undermine future attempts to end out-of-state voting. The ruling has been appealed, but languishes awaiting action. Republicans also passed a strict voter ID law, but Democrats regained control of the legislature in the 2012 elections, and have since watered it down to toothless irrelevance.

Ed Naile’s group has also documented numerous “nests” of out-of-state Democratic campaign workers taking up group residences and registering to vote using the same, sometimes fictitious addresses. They vote in New Hampshire while working on the campaign, and in at least one case, voted elsewhere too. Aparticularly notorious nest was located in the home of State Senator Martha Fuller Clark. In the following video, Mr. Naile describes the many ways Democrats steal votes in NH.

Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers President Ed Naile describes systemic NH vote fraud:

Durham, a town of 15,000 residents, houses the University of New Hampshire. UNH adds 12,000 students, many of whom are from out-of-state. During the November 2012 election, about 3,000 people registered and voted at one location. Democratic Town Councilor Julian Smith, a retired university professor, walked the line of students waiting to register. Those Councilor Smith queried didn’t even know where the town hall was. One responded “I’m a student, you know?” Her companion said, “We’re here today, that’s all that matters.” Another admitted having to change her domicile. Smith responded, “Well, I’m glad you’re here, and I hope you’re here for the right reason, which is, the Left reason.”

Ohio Legalized Voter Fraud

Ohio’s out-of-state voting laws are similar to NH, so not surprisingly, the Obama campaign aggressively cultivated the student vote there. For example, the campaign organized a campus party at the Ohio State University, Columbus campus, with free entertainment from rapper Will.I.Am, and free transportation to the polls where students could register and vote on the same day during Ohio’s infamous “Golden Week.”[3] The New York Times characterized it as a Democrat event with 20 tour buses shuttling students“and other Democrats” to the polls. Of the campus’s 56,000 students, 35 percent, or about 19,600, are out-of-state.[4] All legal, yet those who voted disenfranchised Ohio’s true citizens.

Students Recruited to Support Local Political Machines

In April, 2013, the Pasquotank County, North Carolina Board of Elections sustained 57 of 60 voter registration challenges. All voters listed Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) as their residence. None of the sustained challenges were current students. One was not a U.S. citizen. One admitted she lived in California but voted absentee in NC. One lived in Virginia but admitted voting in NC. Another was a recent graduate who registered in Florida and North Carolina on the same day. He made his NC registration online, a violation of state law. However, in 2012, the (then) Democratic SBOE flouted the law and allowed online voting.

Former Pasquotank County Board of Elections official Betsy Meads asserts that ECSU students are regularly told to register and vote in local elections, even if domiciled elsewhere.[5] ECSU students told Deputy Elections Director Bonnie Godfrey that they were promised perfect grades for voting. Some students said voting was “mandatory.” In another case, the ECSU cheerleading squad was ordered to register and vote, despite out-of-town domiciles. When one refused, the cheerleading coach yelled, “Get in there and vote.” Almost all did.

Voter I.D.

Eric Holder’s DOJ has moved mountains to forestall or prevent legislatures from enacting voter ID, but things have been slowly changing. In 2013 the Supreme Court struck down key parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which required certain states to obtain approval, or preclearance, to change voting laws. As of February 2014, 34 states have voter I.D., but only eight states have strict photo voter ID laws.

Strict Voter ID—Voter without ID receives provisional vote, counted only after voter provides necessary ID.

Non-strict Voter ID—In some cases, voters without acceptable identification may cast a ballot that will be counted without further action required by the voter.

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV)

NPV is an unconstitutional nationwide movement wherein states agree to award all presidential electors to the popular vote winner, regardless of how the state voted. Direct elections become universal when enough state legislatures have joined to make up a majority of the electoral vote (270 of 538). As of April 15, 2014, 10 states plus DC have joined, totaling 165 electoral votes, 61 percent of the 270 needed. Bills have also been passed by one House in Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina and Oregon.

NPV would bias the election in favor of large population centers—which areusually 80 percent or more Democratic—that could dictate the outcome of presidential elections. The Electoral College was enshrined in the Constitution to guarantee less populous states influence in federal elections. Political analyst Dick Morris also predicts much more voter fraud if the NPV goes through. Because large cities will be more important, Democrats will pull out all the stops to pad the vote.

Universal Voter Registration

UVR calls for automatically registering voters listed on various state and federal databases. Cloward and Piven’s goal has always been UVR. They described NVRA as an intermediate step, but UVR will create even more problems:

1. UVR undermines the Constitution
2. UVR facilitates illegal alien voting
3. State and federal lists create duplicates
4. Duplicates are likely to go uncorrected

Leftists chant the UVR mantra. Nation Magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel even cited UVR’s great success in Russia and Venezuela! However, under our noses the Obama administration has achieved a form of UVR with passage of Obamacare. The law provides for online voter registration. DEMOS has projected that this will register 68 million new voters.

Felon Voting

Eric Holder has added his voice to the chorus of demands to allow for felon voting, another reliable Democratic demographic.

Conclusion

Voter fraud, and the corrupt political infrastructure that facilitates, or at best ignores it, is an existential threat to our American Republic. The only answer is to elect principled conservative leaders willing to recognize and confront this threat.

[1] Kris Kobach, telephone Interview with James Simpson, April 18, 2014.
[2] J. Christian Adams, email message to James Simpson, April 9, 2014.
[3] Golden Week has since been eliminated by the Republican legislature. Democrats are calling it “voter suppression” and ACLU has sued to restore it. Ironically, in 2009, when Democrats controlled the legislature, they were all in favor of banning Golden Week.
[4] According to the OSU Admissions Office; May 2, 2014.
[5] Betsy Meads, interview by James Simpson, May 22, 2013 and April 30, 2014.