Posted on 10/25/2004 9:57:51 AM PDT by Dubya
As many as 60,000 people may be registered to vote in both North and South Carolina, according to an investigation by The Charlotte Observer and WCNC-TV. A computer comparison by the news organizations found more than 60,000 people who appear to be registered to vote in both states, one of several instances of possible voter fraud cited in an Observer article Sunday.
Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson and other critics also said illegal immigrants are registering to vote using false documents at driver’s license offices. And North Carolina is investigating two groups that may have falsely registered new voters, including a 15-year-old Wake County boy.
Elections officials say voter fraud – a federal and state crime – is rare, but does happen. North Carolina officials said they’ve found only a few examples. “We investigate any allegation,” said Don Wright, general counsel to the N.C. Board of Elections. “That’s our job.”
Problems with dual registration in the two states could be exacerbated because officials say they check their own records for double registrations, but don’t share data across state lines.
South Carolina Elections Commission director Marci Andino said officials in her state sometimes turn irregularities over to law enforcement, but the system basically relies on trust. “People are taking an oath that they haven’t voted anyplace else when they sign that registry,” Ms. Andino said.
The Observer and WCNC compared computer records for about 7 million registered voters in both states. They found 60,000 or so people who appear to be registered in both, and up to 180 who were listed as having voted in two places in either the 2000 or 2002 general elections.
Reporters found no one who admitted to double-voting and discovered plausible explanations for many of the duplications. In one case, an Army captain was registered to vote in Fayetteville, where he was stationed in 2000, and Greenville, S.C., where he grew up and his father still lives.
Computer records showed Capt. Charles Booker voted in both states in 2000. But, reached at his current post in Fort Bliss, Texas, Capt. Booker says he voted only in Fayetteville. His father, also named Charles Booker, said he did vote in Greenville that year, though election records show he did not.
The elder Mr. Booker guesses that he was mistakenly recorded under his son’s name when he cast his ballot. That could happen, officials acknowledge. “You’re going to have some poll workers that, when they check off a person, check the person above or below, but that is not common,” Mr. Wright said.
The news organizations’ computer comparisons matched people based on their first and last names, middle initials, birth dates, race and gender, as recorded with the elections boards.
Elections officials acknowledge it would be hard to catch anyone who intentionally double-voted across state lines, because states don’t share their voter databases.
“It’s the big loophole in the whole system,” Mr. Wright said.
After the confusion over the 2000 presidential election, both presidential campaigns are keeping a close watch for voting irregularities this year, with teams of lawyers across the country to contest any problems at the polls.
In the Carolinas, both parties will have hundreds of lawyers and volunteer observers at polling places, especially in the largest and most-contested precincts. “North Carolina has not faced the problems that we’ve seen in other states, but we can’t take it for granted,” said Hampton Dellinger, former legal counsel to Gov. Mike Easley, who is helping coordinate the legal effort for the Democrats.
Election officials in the Carolinas acknowledge the potential pitfalls but say they go to great lengths to prevent cheating.
“During a highly charged presidential election, I’m sure there’s more suspicion than it happens,” said Gary Bartlett, executive director of the N.C. Board of Elections.
Critics are worried about other possible forms of fraud. A Washington-based advocacy group for tougher immigration laws recently said that it believes illegal immigrants may be registered to vote in North Carolina because they were able to sign up when obtaining driver’s licenses without Social Security numbers.
“North Carolina has been a magnet for people looking for an easy way to get driver’s licenses,” said Charlotte attorney Tom Ashcraft, a Republican activist and former member of the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections. “The question is, what effort has been made to make sure there aren’t noncitizens voting?” State elections and Division of Motor Vehicles officials say they’ve run two checks – one in 2002 and again this year – of people who received driver’s licenses without proof of citizenship and found only a handful who had registered to vote. Those cases are being investigated, they said.
North Carolina officials also are investigating two groups that appear to have submitted fake voter registration cards. An advocacy group known as ACORN, for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has had trouble across the country because it pays workers to register voters, and some have decided to pad their work.
The group’s chief organizer in Charlotte discovered a few weeks ago that one worker had faked about 70 registrations. The employee was fired and the information turned over to the state board, which is investigating.
A similar problem with a consumer-interest group in Wake County, where the 15-year-old boy was among those signed up to vote, was also turned over to state officials. ––– Information from: The Charlotte Observer, http://www.charlotte.com
I heard on the radio that they had been made aware of this. It sounded like they were going to check the voter rolls for duplication. They had already made sure thay weren't registered twice in state and now between NC and SC.
I read that it might have been 35 to 50 thousand that voted in both NY and FL in 2000...
Thanks for the ping
Nowadays we have bar-code scannable driver's licenses. Can't we at least do cross checks on the people who have registrations and driver's licenses? Seems like a given state's Dept of Motor Vehicles is the state's identity bureau; you have to give significant evidence to get a DL, and they also provide, on similar proof, a non-license photo ID. It certainly seems that the DMV is the logical place to register to vote, and to check against multiple in-state registrations. And it seems that the states are pretty much set against granting a license to drive in one state without confiscating that person's preexisting out-of-state license.
That might not be complete proof against double registration, but it sure would control the problem somewhat if you had to get a non-license ID without using your license as ID in order to vote illegally in another state.
'Course the actual problem is the resistance of the Democratic Party to checks on vote fraud. That, and the fact that whether card-carrying or not, journalists are Democrats.
Saw that early this morning. Disgusting!
That's incredible and if the election officials in Fla. and NY don't have their act together by now, we are doomed.
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