Election Integrity

Written by Jane Carrell

For the past twenty years, I have followed reports of election fraud, a phenomenon the mainstream media will assure you BARELY exists. It seems the major political parties have widely differing viewpoints on the very nature of voting. Should voting really be as easy as buying a Snickers bar? Or should it be a bit more like cashing a check in a grocery store? Is it appropriate to demand identification of a person seeking to cast a vote? Is requiring an ID from a voter, or checking his signature against his registration tantamount to “voter suppression?”

Democrats believe that it is.

Everyone knew that political operatives in the time of the great Richard J. Daley, Democrat Mayor of Chicago, engaged in some “tricky” behaviors at election time. It is widely believed that, but for some “extra” votes produced in some Chicago precincts (and multiple votes from Texas graveyards, where Kennedy’s VP candidate, Lyndon Johnson, held sway), John F. Kennedy would have lost his 1960 electoral race against Richard Nixon.

Election fraud is bipartisan, with both parties having been found guilty of funny business since the nation’s founding. In Mayor Daley’s Chicago and elsewhere across the country, votes were gained by threats, bribes, and the proverbial dead person risen from the grave. (See more HERE and HERE)

We’ve all heard the joke: “My uncle voted Republican all his life. It was only after he died that he began voting Democrat.” In this series of articles about election fraud, you will hear reports of a variety of means of stealing elections. Later installments will discuss:

• The mystery of the disappearing 2010 election Milwaukee electorate.

• A home for mentally handicapped adults whose residents were transported and “helped” by AFSCME union members to vote in the Crow Wing County auditor’s office in Brainerd, Minnesota. One young man reported to his parents that he had voted for Gerald Ford. Ford wasn’t running in the 2008 election.

• In Missouri and Ohio, observers reported van loads of non-English speaking Somali immigrants transported to polling places and “assisted” to vote.

• Do safeguards exist to ensure nursing home residents are freely casting their votes, and are “compos mentis” as they do so?

• In Illinois, “Early voting,” which may comprise of as many as 40 percent of ballots cast, is never included in the required 5 percent audit of Illinois votes cast. Does that represent a big hole in election security?

• There is inherent untrustworthiness of ANY “voting machine” with an internet connection, even one solely dedicated to reporting election results to the election authority.

• Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting (.ORG), describes “four essential [election] processes that have to be available to the public for authentication without need for special expertise.”

1. Who can vote – the voter list
2. Who did vote – the participating voter list
3. Whether or not the ballot that gets counted is the same one that
got cast – the “chain of custody”
4. The public counting of the vote

Use of Electronic Voting Machines negates the fourth point, and absentee voting, in many jurisdictions, negates at least three of the essential processes.

Stay tuned as we discuss known vulnerabilities in election security, in Illinois and in other states, and possible fixes where they exist.

Illinois Conservative Union is educating Illinoisans on the subject of Election Integrity.  You can sign up for ICU email-alerts on the home page at ILPAC.org

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Jane is a retired grandmother who serves as secretary on the Illinois Conservative Union board. She is past president of Winnebago County Right to Life, and writes on issues of pro-life and election integrity.  She is a graduate of St. Scholastica High School, Chicago, and Loyola University, New Orleans.