FReepers Against Voter Fraud

Since I am renewing this thread a little sooner than planned, I am leaving the original body of the thread in place and just making additions of references at this time. I think it is important to keep the statement of purpose and how we came to it at the forefront for now. Later on, as more people become aware of the thread and how it is set up, I will probably change it some and just give a link back to the original.

"The right of citizens to vote and have their vote count is the cornerstone of our democracy - the necessary precondition of government of the people, by the people and for the people. Enforcing the laws that guarantee voting rights and punish voting fraud is the duty of the Department of Justice. More than mere law enforcement, our responsibility to protect the access to and integrity of elections is the responsibility of upholding freedom itself.

America is a nation whose founding documents and most inspired words uphold the ideal of democratic self-government as a model for the world. The opening phrases of the Declaration of Independence declare that governmental power, if it is to be just, must be derived from the consent of the governed. The Constitution begins, purposefully and deliberately, with these three words: "We the people . . ."

America has failed too often to uphold the right of every citizen's vote, once cast, to be counted fairly and equally. Votes have been bought, voters intimidated and ballot boxes stuffed. The polling process has been disrupted or not completed. Voters have been duped into signing absentee ballots believing they were applications for public relief. And the residents of cemeteries have infamously shown up at the polls on election day.

Today, it is more important than ever before that we embrace the privilege that makes us unique among the peoples, nations and societies of human history. Our way of life is not a given, and our freedom is not an accident. Liberty is a rare gift for which millions have worked and suffered and sacrificed and died. It now falls to us to guard this gift from those who would destroy it. It falls to us, the free, to ensure that the cornerstone of our freedom - government of the people, by the people, and for the people - does not perish from the earth."

It has been quite a month and overall a victorious one for Republicans. The new year looms bright on the horizon with the promise of much needed changes taking place now that we have the majority in both the House and Senate and with the opportunity to finally have some conservative judges seated who will uphold the Constitution rather than legislating the socialist agenda of the Democrats from the bench and Tiny Tommy Daschle and his obstructionist thugs have been spanked soundly and sent to their rooms.

While we had several days of delirious gloating, drunk on the thrill of a hard earned and well-deserved victory, we know all too well that the election and the events leading up to it were not without incident and once again the deck was stacked against us as the Democrats tried every trick in the book in yet another shameless effort at stealing an election. With the blatant disregard for the law so characteristic of them when it obstructs their designs, they managed to get a liberal kangaroo court to uphold the replacement of Torricelli on the ballot in New Jersey beyond the legal deadline for doing so for no other reason than having determined that the scandal and corruption surrounding Torricelli rendered him incapable of winning. In Minnesota, prior to Paul Wellstone's ill-fated final flight, a plan was uncovered that had Democrats busing in students from out of state to take advantage of Minnesota's same day voter registration to vote illegally for Paul Wellstone. Even as this was being revealed, the campaign was underway to push a similar same day registration legislation in Colorado and California, thereby opening new avenues for illegal voting in those states. In South Dakota Democrat operatives (sorry, I cannot bring myself to use the word "Democratic") paid a field worker in excess of $12,000 over a period of 3 months to register native Americans on the reservations. It was later discovered that many registration cards that had been turned in by that worker had been written in the same handwriting. Among the newly registered was at least one who was known to be recently deceased. This and other irreglarities that were uncovered in South Dakota has led to 1 out of 10 ballots there being under investigation. Fish need water, plants need sunshine, an addict needs a fix and Democrats need power and these three cases are just samples of the extent to which they will go to get it.

The idea for this thread was born following the Arkansas Hog Wild FReepers' discovery of organized intimidation tactics on the part of Democrat and NAACP operatives in Jefferson County, Arkansas as relayed by FReeper, stop_the_rats, a Republican poll watcher who gained undesired and unfair national notoriety during early voting, and by a Republican campaign worker who "infiltrated" the Clinton led, pre-election campaign "event" there. The original story was posted as part of the after-FReep report with more detail added in a post-election update. The story generated such outrage that the thread turned into a FReeper brainstorm as we labored over how we might counteract the dishonest methods employed by the Democrats to hijack elections. The effort yielded an abundance of references and it was generally agreed that voter fraud is, or at least should be, of great concern to all of us. There is a strong probability that the South Dakota election was stolen and in Arkansas the fraud machine was spinning out of control and may well have cost Tim Hutchinson his senate seat as well, despite the shadow cast over him in the wake of his divorce and remarriage. Chances are that we'll never know. Thankfully neither of these races ended up being the tie-breaker that would determine the balance of power in the Senate, but either could have been and had that been the case, you can bet it would have gotten really ugly and may have produced an entirely different result.

Even as the Democrats are still licking their wounds and wondering what on Earth happened on November 5, they are already scrambling and scheming and conniving as to ways to prevent our intercepting their next power grab in 2004. This is revealed in their ongoing efforts to block any attempt to validate a voter's legitimacy whether it be by requiring a legal form of ID at the polls, the repeal of motor voter legislation, cracking down on absentee balloting and early voting, doing away with same day registration or by the presence of poll watchers at polling places. In every case they play the race card crying "black voter intimidation" when in reality they are simply thrashing against the net that could trap those guilty of voting illegally thereby inhibiting travel on their familiar roads of voter fraud. Thankfully, Republicans were more diligent this year and undoubtedly made an impact. More questionable ballots were challenged, more questions raised, more accountability called for and more light shed on irregularities. Until recently, prosecution for voter fraud has been virtually unheard of, but that is starting to change. There have been hundreds of stories published over the past several weeks relating to voting irregularities and credible allegations of fraud. Some have led to criminal charges being filed and still others have led to investigations which are ongoing. While it is unlikely that all election fraud can be stopped, it is much harder for it operate under a spotlight, which is exactly why we must each do our part to make sure that the spotlight stays on those "shadowy" recesses where voting machines mysteriously vanish, ballot boxes are obscured from view and the demons of electoral darkness run amok.

It was suggested that the opening remarks of Attorney General John Ashcroft be used as the basis of our mission statement for this thread. In these precarious times when we are at war and we are threatened daily by terrorism, our liberty has become more precious than ever and we must be vigilant to protect it not only from foreign invaders, but also from those who would erode it from within by compromising the integrity of our elections. In order to succeed in a battle it is essential to know the enemy and attack at his greatest point of vulnerability. Included here is a list of links, which while by no means exhaustive, can serve to enlighten the electorate. Many of these stories are from Arkansas only because this was the springboard for this thread and we look forward to other FReepers adding stories from their own areas as well as any based in personal experience. The original thread also produced a wealth of resources as we discussed who we should contact if we became aware of voting irregularities or suspected fraud. Again the list of links is far from comprehensive and additions are welcome. Of course the whole point of this exercise is to get more conservative voters involved in changing the laws to close loopholes which make it easy to cheat, to promote the enforcement of existing election laws and to take part in the election process at the local level all with the goal of intercepting future fraud campaigns. In other words our goal is to STOP THE RATS FROM HIJACKING THE ELECTION PROCESS AND TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!

Many thanks to all the wonderful FReepers who contributed their time, energy and ideas to produce the foundation for this thread:

On thread 2, I also want to thank Saundra Duffy, Mia T and mlmr for their alerting us to a couple more hot spots and also providing some additional information. Thank you to diotima, ffrancone, and Nick Danger for their efforts to move this campaign beyond Free Republic and disseminate information for public consumption. Updates on this effort will be posted regularly as well. Geist Krieger, has provided a very interesting and in depth analysis of methods of voting and their impact on our elections. If anybody has a means of storing a document for public access, please let me know and I will FReepmail it to you so that a link can be posted. It is quite long.

KNOW THY ENEMY! If you're like me, you once had a naive trust in the integrity of our elections in America. All that changed for me though, with the election debacle of 2000 when it became readily apparent that Al Gore was trying to steal the presidency and his operatives were so desperate that they were doing it right in the face of the American people. I was absolutely furious but I believed that now that people could see the Clinton/Gore political machination for the shameless assault on America that it was, they would wake up and demand accountability from those responsible. I really wasn't prepared for seeing how many people would continue to perpetrate the lies the Democrats told even in the face of that fiasco and how many would continue to buy into them. Even after that I believed that surely, now that it was out in the open, something would be done to fix it before the next election. I also was not prepared to discover the extent to which voter fraud had woven its way into our political system like a burrowing parasite with expanding tentacles entwining themselves around the arteries of freedom. The sense of betrayal I have felt has been disheartening, to say the least, but it gave rise to the outrage that made me determined to try to do something about it. If you read even a few of these links, it will change forever the way you look at future elections and will hopefully encourage you to be part of the solution.

If any of these links become outdated many of these articles are posted in their entirity on the original FReep thread. If you let me know via FReepmail, I will make editorial adjustments accordingly before renewing the thread.

In order to effect changes it is important to have channels through which we can make our voice heard. One reason the Democrats get away with as much as they do is because they make a lot of noise. It is time WE make some noise of our own. There are a number of individuals, organizations and media sources who support our Constitution and seek to protect the integrity of our elections. Here are a few of them. Rather than clutter the body of this thread with a long list of email addresses, I will post the websites. Most of these have contacts and email addresses on them. While I have not listed any here, it is important to keep in mind that just because a source is on the opposing side doesn't mean that they can't still be used to our advantage. Consider this parable of Jesus.

Election laws and practices vary widely from state to state, and therein lies part of the problem. In order to address the issues we need first to know what the law, as it currently exists is and work within it and where applicable work to see that it is enforced. Second, you will come to discover that many of the opportunities for fraud are born from flaws in the laws themselves, in which case we need to work on getting those laws changed. Below is a very brief list of some election laws and guidelines which we have referenced recently. I am sure this section will grow considerably as others add their contributions.

What can FReepers do? For starters we can identify states that will have key races in the 2004 election. Is your state one of them? Are there known problem precincts in YOUR county? Let's start getting important information about the race, the candidates, the electoral history of the state, the laws in that state and how open they may leave the process to tampering, history of voter fraud in the state, conservative media outlets there, and whatever else you can think of that might be relevant to equip the electorate to head off problems in advance.

Democrats LIE! Their biggest and most effective lie is that Republicans are deliberately trying to prevent blacks and/or other minorities from voting. In effect, they're calling us racists. The truth is that it is them who seem to consider blacks and other minorities so inferior and ignorant and lacking in initiative that they are incapable of voting without the benefit of THEIR (the Democrats') "guidance" and "protection". They squeal "intimidation" at every opportunity and intimidation certainly comes into play. The real question is "who is doing the intimidating?" Their greatest fear is that blacks will recognize how badly they've been duped and insulted by these people and leave the party in droves. That can work in our favor if we work with it. Black conservatives have perhaps the greatest responsibility for telling other black voters the truth about the Democrat party, although it is certainly something we should all work on. Independent thought is the enemy of the Democrats.

Talk about election fraud. Bring it up whenever an opportunity presents itself. Keep a notebook at all times and if someone tells you anything pointing to vote fraud, get more details. Write down such things as county, precinct, candidates in the race, name of the witness and whatever else you can think of. If it seems credible, report it to someone, then follow it up and find out what, if anything, was done with the information.

Have your elected officials, city attorneys, election officers and judges in your email address book, your regular address book and on speed dial. When you become aware of a credible allegation of voter fraud, get busy and push for them to prosecute offenders very publicly and to the FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW! If a few people are seen to be doing time for their electoral indiscretions, observers may be less willing to follow suit.

Rally others and spend election day in parking areas of and near problem polling places at ready with notebook and camera. A favorite technique of Democrats is to load up buses full of paid voters and haul them from precinct to precinct to cast multiple votes. Getting license numbers of these buses and observing them closely could yield enough evidence to prove fraud. Note or photograph anything "out of the ordinary".

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." (Josef Stalin)

Take part in the process. Here is a list of suggestions that stop_the_rats posted on another thread:

1. Plan to take election day off in 2004.
2. Be a poll worker. You get paid for this.
3. Be a poll watcher. Call your local Republican headquarters or the campaign office of one of your Republican candidates and volunteer to be a poll watcher.
4. Count absentee ballots. You get paid for this also.
5. Be a poll closer. It's a long day. Some people who can't poll watch because of work, could agree to come after work for 2 hours and close the polls to give poll watchers a break. Get final counts and make sure no "late" voters turn up.
6. Take lunches to poll workers and poll watchers.
7. Man the headquarters so if problems arise, poll workers or watchers have a place to call for help. Have a list of numbers: local election officals, state officals.
8. Find a person who will agree to "be in charge"of all the rules poll watchers and poll workers need to follow. Each state has rules and in some cases, state election representatives will come to your city and give a presentation.
9. Encourage others to get involved.
10. Smile; we have them worried!

Some might want to take it a step furthur, if that is an option in your area, and be an election judge. Or you may have specific talents and training that you could donate to the cause, such as legal assistance and advice.

Finally; ask questions. FReepers have an uncanny ability to ask the right questions in most any situation AND to find answers and we have an inexhaustable resource right here on Free Republic. Here are just a few questions to start with.

"How do we work to get cooperation between poll watchers and workers and clarify expectations on all sides BEFORE an election?"

"How can you prove fraud? What is legal in a given state (photos, tape recording, witness statements, compiling a list of names, video taping) and how can these techniques be implemented in a non-obtrusive way?"

How limiting is jurisdiction on working in some capacity at the polls? This may vary from state to state. For example, during the training for counting absentee ballots in Pulaski County, Arkansas, I was told that to be a poll worker or to count ballots, you had to be a resident of the county in which you served, but that a poll watcher could be from anywhere as long as he or she was authorized by the candidate or party. This could be very useful to pursue. In the 2002 election, in spite of all the Rat hype, there was still a shortage of Republican poll watchers in a number of "problem" locations. There were also quite a few FReepers who expressed a desire to do something, but there were no particular problems in their own areas. If we can, in fact, be poll watchers anywhere, that may have great potential for wider coverage of historically fraud prone precincts in future elections.

"If My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14)

FReepers; your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get out there and STOP THE RATS!

As information has been posted, I have been keeping track of counties that have a history of voting "irregularities" and/or blatant fraud or in which there is legal action currently pending. From that information I have generated a county "watch list". This is not only to alert those seeking to combat the voter fraud travesty, but also to put those responsible for it on notice that the game is up and the heat is on. This list will no doubt grow as more cases come to light, and by all means, if you know of such concerns in your local areas, alert this thread and have the offending county "hot listed". It is the contributions of FReepers that will make this effort work!

Broward County

Duvall County

Lake County

Miami-Dade County

Orange County

Osceola County

Palm Beach County

Seminole County

Volusia County

Bennett County

Codington County

Dewey County

Minnehaha County

Pennington County

Shannon County

Ziebach County

The following states have been pinged, which means if your state's flag isn't flying, then FReepers in your state have not yet been alerted! The flags are posted in the order the states were pinged. It would be nice to have a representative FReeper from each state, particularly those states that are "fraud zones". If anyone would be willing to represent your state on this thread on a regular basis, please let me know and I will begin a list of FReeper contacts for each state.

Here's some more info/analysis from that site regarding the above:

The trial of Yonkers political operative Dennis Wedra, found not guilty of election fraud by a state Supreme Court jury last week, offered an insider's view of sleaze politics making a mockery of democracy.

Consider:
Philip Werbel, a lawyer from Armonk obsessed with winning a judgeship despite losing three earlier elections, tricked primarily Hispanic residents in southwest Yonkers into registering in minor political parties and casting absentee ballots for him as a Democratic candidate for Yonkers city judge in the September 2000 primary.

Wedra, president of the Yonkers Democratic Club and Werbel's campaign manager, made a deal with Anthony Mangone, a lawyer and campaign manager for Republican state Sen. Nicholas Spano of Yonkers, for Wedra to collect nominating petition signatures for minor-party lines for Spano. Spano won the November election on minor-party votes.

Mangone testified that he paid Wedra $15,000 from a committee fund separate from Spano's campaign fund because "people would want to know why a Democrat was supporting a Republican."

Mangone admitted writing Spano's name on absentee ballots given to him by Wedra: "I was told that these were our people, so I had the understanding that these were people who would have given us permission to do as we pleased." They had not.

When Spano's opponent, Greenburgh Democratic county Legislator Thomas Abinanti, questioned Green Party absentee ballots, Mangone tried to keep them from being opened "because by keeping the ballot closed, no one would ever know then there was a vote put on there that shouldn't be put on there," Mangone testified.

"All of them are shady characters," said juror Arthur Thornton after the unanimous not-guilty verdict on 94 counts of fraud, forgery and elections law violations. "They let the guilty ones off when they gave Werbel and Mangone a plea bargain."

Werbel, who made a secret deal with Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office and taped a conversation with Wedra, has pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor election-law violation. Mangone had agreed to plead guilty to a similar charge in exchange for his testimony. But since Wedra was acquitted, Mangone may not face charges because the grand jury that indicted Wedra and Werbel last August declined to indict him.

Wedra's defense lawyer portrayed Wedra as the little guy and Werbel and Mangone as "two weasels who would have you convict Mr. Wedra instead of them." It probably heightened juror sympathy for Wedra when Pirro trooped in with nine assistant district attorneys as final arguments were being made. So pleased with themselves were the jurors that they waited outside the courtroom to greet Wedra as if he just swam the Hudson for charity.

So what happens now?

Spano is chairman of a state Senate task force on election reform. Will he make recommendations about "some gray areas in the law that need to be tightened up," as he put it after Wedra's acquittal, gray areas that his own campaign exploited? Will he keep Mangone as his $100,000-a-year chief counsel after Mangone's admission that he filled in Spano's name on ballots without voters' permission, which Mangone said Spano would not have condoned?

State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Teresi, brought in from Albany County to hear the case to avoid possible conflicts involving local judges, acknowledged that there "certainly was some voter fraud that took place."

That's a more generous interpretation than the one made by Supreme Court Justice W. Denis Donovan, who presided over an earlier civil trial involving Werbel and Wedra. Citing "a horrible scheme to subvert the law," Donovan threw out more than 350 absentee ballots.

Despite the acquittal, questions remain. Were payments to Wedra, including those from five Democratic and Republican judicial candidates who hired him to collect signatures, filed properly on campaign-finance statements? Who told Mangone "these were our people"? How does the Westchester Board of Elections figure into all of this? Mangone is a former deputy elections commissioner. Wedra's daughter works for the elections board and is also treasurer of the Yonkers Democratic Club. Werbel used her address while running for the Yonkers judgeship.

When Wedra was asked during the trial who were the "big guys" he alluded to in a remark that Werbel taped ˜ "You think they're going to go after these other big guys?" ˜ he named only Carolee Sunderland, the Republican elections commissioner. Why her? Why did the prosecution indicate that it was unable to obtain up-to-date financial records of the Yonkers Democratic Club from the elections board?

Who restores confidence in the democratic voting system for those who votes were hijacked?

Pirro said her investigation would continue. Though hampered by the acquittal, it should. The trial brought out circumstances that compel further investigation as well by the state Attorney General's Office and the state Commission on Judicial Conduct.

Michigan:

Council members indicted on election fraud charges
By Klint Lowry, Heritage Newspapers

ECORSE — The state Attorney General’s Office handed down indictments Friday against three City Council members, accusing them of election fraud.

Council members Zedora Miller, Angela Smith and Bobbie Baker along with Frank Fields, head of Ecorse Citizens for Good Government, originally were ordered to turn themselves in to 25th District Court in Lincoln Park by yesterday for arraignment.

However, the Attorney General’s Office agreed to postpone the arraignment for a week because the attorney representing the four was sick.

The case pertains to the possible altering of absentee ballots in a special election held Jan. 9, 2001, to replace four council members who had been recalled two months earlier.

According to the complaint, which was the result of a lengthy investigation by the Michigan State Police, the four worked together to distribute and collect absentee voter applications, and then took part in the collection of those ballots.

Smith is charged with one count of improper return of absentee ballots and one count of conspiracy to improperly return absentee ballots.

Baker is charged with five counts of improper return and three counts of conspiracy.

Fields and Miller both face one count each of improper return, conspiracy and tampering.

Miller also has been charged with improper return and tampering in regards to absentee ballots in the November 2001 election.

Each of the felony counts is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Attempts to reach Baker, Miller and Fields for comment were unsuccessful.

The indictments are the latest chapter in a saga of political and legal actions and accusations that have hung over Ecorse politics for some time.

A difference of opinion over whether to fire then-City Controller William Barnett led to the recall of council members Brenda Banks, Robert Heller Jr., William Holmes and John Skotnicki in November 2000, orchestrated in large by Fields’ group.

That left Miller and Smith, along with then-Mayor James Tassis, as the only remaining members of the council.

In order to have a quorum, Miller and Smith named Baker, James DiTrapani, Cheryl Miller and Roberta Worthy to be interim council members until a special election.

Worthy stepped down soon after for personal reasons and was replaced by Michael Mitchell.

Once the special election was held, the council situation became even more muddled.

Initially, it appeared that Baker had won one of the four seats, finishing four votes ahead of Lewis Jones.

Jones called for a recount, during which the Wayne County Board of Canvassers invalidated several ballots for what it determined was improper use of correction fluid.

There actually were several claims of wrongdoing. A bundle of about 175 absentee ballots, identically sealed, showed up at the city clerk’s office on election night.

There also were 16 ballots set aside by City Clerk Phyllis Cook, who said she had suspicions about them.

After the recount, Jones had more votes. Before he could be sworn in, however, Baker and his allies got a restraining order and the ballot issue went to the courts.

After getting as high as the Michigan Court of Appeals, it was finally decided in May 2001 that Jones was the winner.

Meanwhile, a recall campaign against Cook, again spearheaded by Fields, for her handling of the questionable absentee ballots, went nowhere.

Fields had some vindication in August 2001 when the Michigan Department of State determined that the four recalled council members had to reimburse the city for about $75,000 in legal fees.

In November 2001, Miller and Smith were re-elected to the council. Baker won a seat and DiTrapani was elected mayor.

Throughout 2002, council meetings were a battle zone, with a clear line of demarcation between Miller, Smith, Baker and Cheryl Monroe on one side and DiTrapani and Councilwomen Julie Cox and Brenda Banks on the other.

In early December, Miller, Smith, Baker and Monroe tried to vote DiTrapani from office over a two-month squabble concerning the use of a vacant office next to his.

DiTrapani took the council to court to get a restraining order. The day of the hearing, both sides agreed to back down and DiTrapani took back the mayor’s seat.

DiTrapani was at a swearing-in party for Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano when he got word of the indictments.

Although he said on Saturday that he had heard a rumor that something was coming, he laughed at other suggestions he said he’s already heard that he was somehow responsible for the indictments coming when they did.

"(The Attorney General’s Office) isn’t going to listen to me about whether or not they have an indictment they want to hand down," he said.

The indictments were among the first actions taken by the state’s new attorney general, Michael Cox.

"Mr. Cox feels this sort of corruption has no place," Attorney General’s Office spokesman Sage Eastman said Monday.

Eastman said the indictments were the result of a yearlong investigation that had reached a conclusion.

Though the immediate appearance is that this could be just the break DiTrapani could use in the perpetual political division within the council, he was quick to point out that these are merely indictments, not convictions, and people should wait for the legal system to determine the validity of the charges.

Though it’s another black eye to the city, DiTrapani saw the possibility of a silver lining to this latest scandal.

"I’d like to think this is going to clear things up," he said. "These things are serious, and maybe with these people will realize they have to quit playing their little sandlot politics and get serious."

http://www.thenewsherald.com/news/N01IKK1.asp?ID=172

Older piece, but very relevant. Some good reasons to clean up the "Motor Voter Act"!

STATEMENT of
John Samples, PhD
Director, Center for Representative Government
The Cato Institute

On the Motor Voter Act and Voter Fraud

before the

Committee on Rules and Administration
United States Senate

The Motor Voter Act and Voter Fraud
March 14, 2001

Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee:

My name is John Samples. I am Director of the Center for Representative Government at The Cato Institute.

I want to thank you Mr. Chairman for inviting me to testify before the committee about election reform.

Mr. Chairman, the United States of America is the greatest example of what James Madison called "popular rule." We enjoy a legacy of democratic rights and obligations that remains the envy of the world. Differences notwithstanding, we all agree that the franchise is sacred and should be above mere partisan or individual advantage. At the same time, in the spirit of the Founding Fathers, we seek to improve our political system when necessary and possible. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today about some shortcomings of our current electoral system.

In 1994, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act (popularly known as the "Motor Voter Act"). Congress succinctly stated the aims of the law:

to establish procedures that will increase the number of eligible citizens who register to vote in elections for Federal office;
to make it possible for Federal, State, and local governments to implement this Act in a manner that enhances the participation of eligible citizens as voters in elections for Federal office;
to protect the integrity of the electoral process;
to ensure that accurate and current voter registration rolls are maintained.
The National Voter Registration Act has clearly fulfilled one of those purposes. Registration rolls grew by 20 percent from 1994 to 1998. Yet enhanced voter registration was never an end in itself. Many activists and experts believed the United States suffered from declining voter participation and that increasing registration would lead to higher voter turnout. Both of these beliefs have turned out to be wrong.

For many years political scientists saw a steady decline in the electoral turnout of the voting age population and as a percentage of registered voters. Leaders in the discipline also thought that reducing the costs of voting - primarily through easier registration - would arrest this steady decline and fortify American democracy. The National Voter Registration Act thus grew out of the findings of political science.

Political scientists have traditionally measured voting turnout as a percentage of the voting age population. Recently political scientists Samuel Popkin and Michael McDonald have shown that "voting age population" is an inaccurate gauge for measuring turnout. The Census Bureau's estimate of the voting age population includes several categories of persons ineligible to vote: non-citizens, disenfranchised felons, persons who have moved to a new residence after registration closed, and the mentally incompetent. Popkin and McDonald have produced a new and more accurate measure of the American population eligible to vote. Figure 1 shows Popkin and McDonald's revised turnout during Presidential elections as percentage of those eligible to vote. Figure 2 indicates revised turnout during off-year elections as proportion of those eligible to vote.

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The United States did see a decline in voting turnout among eligible voters around 1972. Since 1974, the trend in voting turnout in national elections has been basically flat during presidential years and slightly upward during non-presidential election years. Conventional wisdom to the contrary, the United States had experienced steady turnout at the polls for about three decades. There has been no steady decline, nor a crisis of legitimacy for the American republic. The National Voter Registration Act aimed to solve a problem that did not exist.

"Motor Voter" has also failed to increase voting turnout. Looking at Popkin and McDonald's revised numbers in Figures 1 and 2, we see that turnout after 1994 is similar to turnout prior to the law. Participation in the Presidential election of 1996 was the lowest since 1948 while estimates of turnout in 2000 suggest an average performance. The same can be said of the off year elections in 1994 and 1998. The world of voting turnout before and after "Motor Voter" looks much the same. This is not really surprising. As the political scientist Martin Wattenberg has pointed out, states like North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin have no or very lenient registration requirements, and yet all have seen declines in voting turnout.

In summary, we have received few of the benefits promised by the National Voter Registration Act. While registration has increased, the law has not enhanced "the participation of eligible citizens as voters in elections for Federal office." Moreover, the basic premise of "Motor Voter" - reducing the costs of registration would increase voter turnout - now seems disproved by experience. The plus side of the ledger for "Motor Voter" seems empty.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the negative side of the ledger. The costs of "Motor Voter" should be measured by the other goals of the law. Congress intended for "Motor Voter" to both protect the integrity of the electoral process and to ensure officials could maintain "accurate and clean" registration rolls. Neither goal has been met.

The Motor Voter Act allowed citizens to register to vote simultaneously with an application for a driver's license, by mail, or in person. The Act made it harder to verify the identity of voters seeking to register. It also considerably complicated the states' task of keeping the registration rolls clean. For example, to remove a voter who has moved from the rolls of a voting district, the local jurisdiction has two choices. First, they could get written confirmation of the move from the citizen. Lacking that, the jurisdiction had to send a notice to the voter. If the notice card was not returned and the person did not vote in two general elections for Federal office after the notice was sent, then the jurisdiction could remove their name from the rolls.

The cost of these mailings is significant. In Indiana, for example, such a mailing would have a price tag of about $2 million or about twice the Election Division's entire annual budget. Given this price tag and the limited resources of most local election boards, we should not be surprised that the registration rolls throughout the nation are enormously inaccurate. In some counties, election administrators report, the voting roll numbers are bigger than the voting-age population.

In the short time since Election 2000, we have seen startling new evidence of the disorder of registration rolls in several states. In Indiana, for example, the Indianapolis Star looked closely at the rolls. They concluded that tens of thousands of people appear on the voter rolls more than once, that more than 300 dead people were registered, and that three convicted killers and two convicted child molesters were on the rolls. In general, experts believe one in five names on the rolls in Indiana do not belong there. A recent study in Georgia found more than 15,000 dead people on active voting rolls statewide. Alaska, according to Federal Election Commission, had 502,968 names on its voter rolls in 1998. The census estimates only 437,000 people of voting age were living in the state that year. Similar studies in other states would no doubt return similar data.

In the balance of my testimony, I would like to focus on the events in St. Louis, Missouri, both during the election of 2000 and thereafter. I believe these events point out the real costs "Motor Voter" has imposed on the United States.

Since last fall, "Operation Big Vote" has been active in the St. Louis area as part of a national campaign -- promoted by Democrats -- to register more African-American voters and get them to the polling booth. This effort delivered 3,800 voter registration cards to the St. Louis Elections Board on the February 7, 2001, the deadline for the March mayoral primary in that city.

A cursory check of the registration cards turned up questionable names. Shortly thereafter, election board workers spent an entire day calling the names listed on the cards and found that nearly all of them were fraudulent. Many of them sought to register prominent people, dead or alive - as well as at least three deceased aldermen and a dog. The media have reported that close examinations have turned up cards that attempted to register prominent businessmen using their childhood addresses, a former deputy mayor using an old address for an alderman, and a former alderman who has been dead for years. They also found cards for convicted felons and for residents who did not seek to register themselves in the primary. The woman at the center of this vote fraud investigation "doesn't deny" that some of her canvassers may have turned in bogus voter registration cards. A grand jury convened by St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce has begun interviewing witnesses regarding the 3,800 bogus registration cards. St. Louis police have obtained a warrant and searched the house of the Operation Big Vote director for evidence.

Not surprisingly, many St. Louis residents are angry that someone had registered them and knew information such as their Social Security numbers. Some of the people registered by the bogus cards told Election Board workers that someone calling himself "Big Mike" came to their homes and said he was with the Election Board and wanted to register them.

This is not the first time Operation Big Vote has been at the center of a voter registration controversy. In 1994, the director of Operation Big Vote was the subject of a similar investigation into fraudulent voter registration cards found among the14,000 that the group had collected to aid a statewide campaign to allow riverboat casinos. No one was indicted.

The implications of the registration fraud scandal in St. Louis are not limited to current events. St. Louis Election Board officials now want to examine 29,500 voter registration cards that came in shortly before the deadline for the November 7 election, in light of discovering that that most of 3,800 cards submitted in February were bogus. John Hancock, executive director of the Missouri Republican Party, called for another look at the last-minute registrations made for November's election. He also said he preferred that U.S. Attorney Audrey Fleissig take charge "because I think the federal government can bring more force to bear on an investigation of vote fraud." The last-minute registrations last fall could throw into question the close November election in Missouri if a sizable number were fraudulent. Democrat Bob Holden won the Missouri contest for governor by about 21,000 votes statewide. In this way, the loose registration process set up by "Motor Voter" has cast doubt on the integrity and outcome of elections in Missouri last year.

Many will recall the election night controversy in St. Louis. A judge ordered that voting places be kept open late only to be overruled shortly thereafter by a Federal appeals court. The initial ruling accepted the claims of local activists who maintained that thousands of voters had been wrongly placed on an inactive list. As it turned out, local officials had acted properly in composing the inactive list. Missed in the controversy was the fact that up to 400 unqualified voters cast ballots in St. Louis in the 2000 election.

I turn now to the costs paid by the nation as a result of the National Voter Registration Act. I begin with concrete dollars estimates, but I would add that I think perhaps the more important costs have been imposed on the civic culture of the United States.

The clogged rolls have cost taxpayers thousands of dollars in cleanup costs and additional election expenses. For example, the Indiana Election Division has conducted its statewide duplicate program four times at a total cost of about $900,000. Moreover, several county officials in Indiana have increased the number of voting sites unnecessarily because the lists are so inaccurate. The county that includes the transient student population of Indiana University at Bloomington has added about a half dozen precincts since "Motor Voter" became law. Each new precinct costs county taxpayers $10,000 for two voting machines and about $500 per election for additional poll workers and supplies. Statewide in Indiana, more than 200 precincts have been added since the law went into effect, according to state election officials. Such costs are not trivial, especially since the state gets nothing in return for such spending. Such costs for the nation as a whole must be large.

We have also learned about the threat of vote fraud posed by such wildly inaccurate voting rolls. Susan Morandi, Nevada's deputy secretary of state for elections, noted that the Motor Voter Act made registration easier but also made the process "much more open to voter fraud." Experts like Deborah Phillips of the Voter Integrity Project add that the trend toward mail-in and absentee voting exacerbates this problem, since those seeking to manipulate the system can pretend to be a dead person or someone who has moved, and then cast a ballot.

The evidence from St. Louis and elsewhere strongly suggests the reality of registration fraud. Looked at technically, registration fraud is not the same as vote fraud. However, as a practical matter, we should ask why anyone would go to the trouble of committing registration fraud if they did not intend to follow through and commit vote fraud. Otherwise, committing registration fraud becomes a senseless act. Are we to believe that individuals commit registration fraud for thrills or simply as a practical joke? The existence of fraudulent registrations suggests the greater threat of a corrupt election, a danger that we dismiss at our peril. Given the state of the registration rolls, a major vote fraud disaster remains a distinct possibility.

We should not presume that vote fraud is an inconsequential danger. On January 22, 2001, the Miami Herald reported that at least 2,000 illegal votes had been cast in about a third of Florida's counties -- very roughly 6,000 for the state as a whole. On January 9, 2001, it revealed that 452 felons had voted unlawfully in Broward County alone. In Georgia, analysts found that over 5,400 dead people had voted over the past 20 years. As I mentioned, at least 400 unqualified voters cast a ballot in St. Louis last November.

The damage done by vote fraud, of course, is clear. Breaking any law, but especially laws meant to protect the integrity of the electoral process, damages our nation. Vote fraud also devalues the votes of those who register and vote properly. It also strikes many people as unfair: most citizens bear the burdens of exercising the right to vote, those who vote illegally claim the right and wish to escape the minimal burdens associated with that right.

The possibility of vote fraud also harms the nation by calling into question the integrity of our electoral system. The Supreme Court has said that the federal government may regulate campaign finance to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption. Allow me to suggest that we should similarly be concerned about the appearance of our electoral process. The lax standards for registration encouraged by "Motor Voter" have left the voter rolls in a shambles in many states. As St. Louis shows, the uncertainty surrounding the rolls breeds mistrust and can call the integrity of the system into question. "Motor Voter" has fomented "the appearance of corruption" that has, fairly or not, done real damage to American government. Political scientists have charted the decline in trust in government over the past four decades. I believe "Motor Voter" has been part of that problem, not part of its solution.

The inflation of the registration rolls has also clearly misled Americans about the state of their democracy. Inflated and inaccurate rolls give a false measure of voting turnout as a proportion of registered voters. In fact, we now know that voting turnout as a percentage of registered voters is much higher than we believed because registration rolls are so inflated. In that sense, the news about voting is much better than we thought, and I suspect that we have seen no decline in voting as a percentage of registered voters. We may even have seen a rise in that measure of voter participation.

Finally, politics is about cooperation as well as conflict. The American people expect their representatives to fight hard for a cause but also to make compromises that serve the public good. The general uncertainty surrounding registration procedures - an uncertainty exacerbated by "Motor Voter" - has increased mistrust between the two political parties in Missouri and perhaps elsewhere. Missouri Republicans now believe with plausible reason that some Democrats tried to commit vote fraud last election day. Democrats, on the other hand, suggest Republicans wish to disenfranchise their constituents. Such conflict inevitably weakens our political system and actuates unnecessary partisan rancor that precludes potential bipartisan agreement on some issues.

Mr. Chairman, judged by its purposes, the National Voter Registration Act should be judged a failure. The Act has brought about a substantial increase in the number of registered voters. However, that increase has been bought at a high price. Specifically, the Act has made it difficult if not impossible to maintain clean registration rolls, a major purpose of the law. Moreover, the inaccuracy in the rolls caused by the Act has thrown into doubt the integrity of our electoral system. Finally, the Act has also failed to achieve its other purpose of increasing voter turnout. In sum, the National Voter Registration Act has provided few of its promised benefits and imposed significant costs on the nation. For that reason, "Motor Voter" seems ripe for reform.

http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-js031401.html

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