by Albert Tieche - Is there voter fraud in our elections? If you ask anyone who
has been deeply involved in putting on elections, they will tell you there’s
always a few ‘bad’ votes in any election.That’s why election officials prefer landslide
elections because you know the will of the people was done in spite of any
background level of bad votes.
However, a few bad votes are NOT what President Trump is
talking about. Trump is talking about large numbers of fraudulent votes –enough
to change the outcome of an election. Is that actually happening? The answer is
“We don’t know”, because nobody wants to look. Democrat leadership keeps saying
there is no evidence of voter fraud. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate
Majority leader says he doesn’t want to spend any federal dollars to look into
possible voter fraud.
Here in Tennessee Republican state election officials
have been reluctant to look into the possibility of non-citizens being
registered to vote. But refusing to look makes people more suspicious. This idea
that the public can be assured that all is well even though no investigations
have been done is ridiculous, but that is what we have been told for quite a
while. There are a lot of different loopholes in the system where fraud can
occur and little holes can sink big ships.
There is certainly a known history of voter fraud in
Tennessee. Much of it is from the era when Tennessee was a one-party state and
Democrat factions fought against each other at the county level. The Democrat
leaders at the state level turned a blind eye to it, back then, viewing it as
a family squabble. The book
“Secrets of the Hopewell Box” by James D. Squires tells the story of under-the-table
voter fraud that used to take place in Davidson County in the 1950s. The movie
“The Battle of Athens” tells the true story of overtly corrupt county
politicians in McMinn county in 1946, who were rigging elections. In the
pivotal scene from that movie, (it’s on YouTube) the sheriff brazenly steals the
ballot boxes on election day and lock themselves in the jailhouse to “count the
ballots”. Armed WWII vets who have had enough corruption besiege the local jail.
A serious exchange of gun fire occurs. The corrupt politicians surrender the
ballot boxes only after the vets blow open the heavy, locked, jail house door
with dynamite. The vets were never prosecuted because the fraud was so obvious.
I have personally heard stories about corrupt local
political operatives, some of whom are still alive, who allegedly stole local
elections as recently as the 1980s, and were never prosecuted. So, there is a
history of voter fraud in Tennessee. The question remains, is there a
significant level of voter fraud occurring today in the US? Again, the answer
is “We don’t know and no one wants to look.”
In the last 5 years, Republican state legislatures in the US
have been pushing for and passing Photo ID which is a reasonable measure to
prevent people from voting under a false identity. Democrats have opposed that
and labeled it as “racist” and “voter suppression” to justify their opposition.
That does not comport with logic. A photo ID is required in almost all instances
when we interface with a government agency or a business that is regulated by a
government agency like banking or airline travel. No one ever labels those photo
ID requirements as “racist” or “banking suppression.”
According to an
August 2016 Gallup poll, 95% of Republicans support photo ID, and 63% of Democrats
do, too. That is about 80% of the population. When Democrat politicians oppose
Photo ID in spite of overwhelming public support,it makes Republicans wonder if
the Democrat politicians know that there is fraud going on in their favor. Again,
we don’t know the truth. And nobody has really looked.
State Election Laws and
Federal Election Laws
Each state has its own set of election laws and they vary. Some
leave more loopholes for fraud than others. The federal government has passed several laws
since 1993 regarding voting, but the federal government has not forced states to
close opportunities for fraud. The federal government gets very involved in
bringing lawsuits when states themselves try to close opportunities for fraud with
state legislation such as Photo ID. That creates a situation where people
perceive the federal government to be going against the will of 80% of the
population. It angers conservatives and makes them suspicious of the federal government’s
motives.
The loopholes in the various state laws and the National Voter Registration Act
of 1993 can be divided into two basic categories:
1.
Fraudulent Registration
2.
Fraudulent Voting
Fraudulent
Registration
The NVRA of 1993 (Motor Voter) got its name because it
required state driver’s license agencies in
44 states to become voter registration offices. (Six states were exempt
because they had no registration requirements or they allowed people to register
and vote on the same day. More on that later.) NVRA mandates that any one
getting or renewing a driver’s license must be provided an opportunity to
register to vote. Motor Voter was supposed to increase voter participation. The
politicians believed low participation occurred because it was too difficult
for people to go to the local election office and register to vote. In this
writer’s opinion, there were two factors involved that many politicians chose
to ignore. First, the politicians of both parties, nationwide, are usually so careful
and boring that they cannot inspire large turnouts. Second, any person who was
motivated to take part in the process in 1993 did not find it difficult to
register and vote.
American self-governance is built on the basis of an
informed and involved electorate. In our age, there are plenty of people who
have no desire to be informed or involved in the process for a variety of
reasons.
That is a choice people are
free to make. But the politicians wanted to boost turnout, so Motor Voter was
born. It resulted in an influx of new registrations from government offices
other than the county election offices. But there was an increase in poorly
completed applications, applications from those already registered, and
ineligible voters attempting to register. The voter rolls got bigger and had
more inaccuracies.
Motor Voter also requires every state office that provides
public assistance (welfare) of any kind to become a voter registration office
and to register welfare recipients to vote, as well as update their registration
any time they move. From the
Department of Justice website regarding NVRA 1993, here is a description of the
agencies, that became voter registration offices -
the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food-Stamp Program), the
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC),
the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (formerly the Aid to
Families with Dependent Children or AFDC program), the Medicaid program, and
the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). This also includes state
public assistance programs.
Fraudulent
Registration - Are Non-Citizens Registered to Vote in Tennessee?
In Tennessee, neither the state employees working at the
driver’s license offices nor the government employees working at the welfare
offices were trained in election law or voter registration procedures. They are
trained to ask the person they are assisting if they want to register to vote.
If they say ‘yes’ they hand the person a form. The people are told to fill out
the form and told to check a box to confirm that they are US Citizens. No proof
of citizenship is required. Just their word. In the election business, this is
known as “self-attestation”. That means we trust that people are being truthful
and we do not verify. (Try that next
time you get “carded” for a beer.) If the people have actual questions, about
the voter registration form, they are told to “contact their local election
office”. The NVRA contains no provisions requiring proof of citizenship. None.
That job is left up to the states but as you will read, not much is being done.
You cannot really fault the people working at the driver’s license
or welfare offices. They did not hire on to be election officials. But, to
comply with the law, they do make sure everyone gets an application to register
to vote, because they know they can run afoul of federal law (NVRA) if they
fail to provide one. So, that is what they do, to citizen and non-citizen
alike. Steve Abernathy, who at the time was a Davidson County Election
Commissioner with extensive election experience, spent 4 hours observing the
process at a drivers’ license office in 2012. He noted that US citizens and
lawful permanent residents (LPR) were both offered the opportunity to register
to vote even though LPRs are not citizens. The staff did not advise the LPRs
that it is a felony for non-citizens to register to vote. Do a lot of non-citizens
actually register? We’re not sure.
You may be thinking, “But wait. In Tennessee, you have to
put down a social security number on the registration, right? If those SS
numbers are fraudulent, the registration gets kicked out, right?” Not
necessarily. In Davidson County, if the SS number on a new application to vote
is a duplicate of an SS number of a voter that is already on the roll, the
system flags the new registration as a duplicate and does not accept the
registration. That process is repeated across county lines when all
registrations are uploaded to the state. This is a good thing but, neither the
counties nor the state of Tennessee checks the SS numbers against the Social
Security Administration’s data base to see if the numbers are indeed valid
numbers issued by the SS Administration and that the names on both the SS
Administration rolls and the voter rolls match. That could and should be done
and it would greatly reduce the opportunities for fraudulent registrations. But
that loophole is still open in Tennessee and elsewhere.
Fraudulent
Registration - Multi-State Cooperatives and SS Number Verifications
The Interstate Crosscheck Program
(ICP)
and the Electronic Registration Information Center
(ERIC) are voluntary cooperatives that state
election officials, usually the Secretary of State or a designee, can join. The
member states crosscheck their voter lists annually to prevent duplicate
registrations and double votes. ICP has 30 member states and ERIC has 21 plus
Washington DC. Tennessee participates in the ICP. A total of 11 states belong
to both organizations, but 14 states belong to neither organization.
Crosschecking is a good idea but it is a fragmented situation at present. It is
not clear why there are two separate voluntary groups performing very similar
functions. Some states require legislation before they can join. The only way
to get a thorough check is for all 50 states to crosscheck each other
annually.
That is not happening so the
loophole for double registration and double voting is still open.
There is a system called
E-Verify that employers use to check
the validity of SS numbers to make sure they are not employing illegal aliens. There
is a similar system called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements
Program (
SAVE) that verifies
eligibility for welfare benefits for non-citizens. Some citizen groups are now
advocating to extend the practice of verifying an individual’s citizenship
status to voter registration rolls. That makes sense. However,
43 of the 50 states do not require a full SS number when registering to vote.
That means going to SS number verification nationwide would require all the
voters in those 43 states to submit their SS number to their county or state
election officials. That would be a difficult but not impossible task. Looking
at the history, it is possible that the DoJ and the federal judiciary would
strike down such an attempt to verify citizenship for voting by using SS
numbers. The DoJ and the judiciary do have a history of stopping state’s
attempts to prevent voter fraud.
Fraudulent
Registration - Local and State Checks for Non-Citizens on Voter Rolls in
Tennessee
In 2012 and 2013, Commissioner Abernathy, with the support
of his fellow Republican Commissioners attempted to determine how many
non-citizens were registered to vote in Davidson County. Residents were
expressing concerns about the possibility of non-citizens being registered to
vote. In addition to concerns about the existing loopholes in the registration
process, many were pointing to the period between 2001 and 2003 as another
reason for concern: Tennessee had dropped the requirement for a person to supply
a Social Security number to acquire a driver’s license in 2001.
Dropping that
requirement led to a surge of non-citizens acquiring a Tennessee driver’s
license because a valid driver’s license serves as an acceptable ID for so many
things in life. The practice of issuing full-fledged driver’s licenses to
non-citizens was stopped in 2003. But for 2 years, between 2001 and 2003,
Tennessee driver’s license offices made no distinction between citizens and
non-citizens when issuing driver’s licenses. Motor Voter was already the law so
the state employees at the driver’s license offices were required to offer voter
registration applications to all who registered. It seems reasonable to
conclude that during that time period the potential for non-citizens to
register to vote was high.
The Partnership for a New American Economy estimated that 45,750 non-citizens
were living in Davidson County between 2010 and 2012. That population number,
combined with the two years of full driver’s licenses being issued to
non-citizens, and the fact that SS numbers on voter registrations are not
verified with the Social Security Administration, suggested that it would be
prudent to check the voter rolls for non-citizens. Tennessee law makers actually
passed a law, TCA 2-2-141, requiring that the voter rolls be checked for
non-citizens after Jan. 1 of 2012.
Abernathy tried to get the Tennessee Department of Safety to
provide a list of Davidson County residents who had acquired the “Certificate
for Driving”. That is what non-citizens in Tennessee now get when they pass the
driving test. That list could then be compared against the Davidson County
Voter database to see if there were matches. It was going to be a test
only, with no purges resulting from the search. (Purging
voters from the roll requires a specific process.)
The Republican election officials at the
state level opposed Abernathy’s test and the Tennessee Department of Safety
refused to supply the list.
On Jan 1 of 2012, TCA 2-2-141 went into effect. It required
the State Coordinator of Elections to perform a statewide comparison similar to
the one Commissioner Abernathy had been attempting at the county level. The new
law set no timetable for this action to occur nor did it specify how to do the
comparison. Many people involved in elections thought the comparison should be
done before the 2012 election. It was not. When the comparison finally was done,
after the 2012 election, the State Election Coordinator announced that Davidson
County had 14 non-citizens registered. The Coordinator did not explain how the
comparison was done. The state elections officials’ opposition to Abernathy’s
effort caused some to wonder just how rigorous the statewide comparison was or
was not. And because the law did not specify that the comparison would be
repeated, it is not clear whether it has or will be repeated.
In one Q & A at a meeting of county election officials,
the State Election Coordinator was asked about the comparison he was required
to run but had not yet done. He advised those gathered that Tennessee officials
were concerned that if the Tennessee comparison produced false positives, the
national media would attack the Tennessee state officials who made the
comparison, like they had done to Florida officials when Florida generated
false positives doing a similar comparison. That expressed fear seemed to
indicate that the desire to avoid false positives was strong, and that could
lead to a less than rigorous search for non-citizens on the voter rolls.
It is important to remember that the Republican state
election officials in Tennessee had just successfully implemented Photo ID.
Nationally, there were attempts to strike down Photo ID in other states.
Tennessee’s success had the Democrats in the state determined to find an
aggrieved party to be a plaintiff in a suit to overturn Tennessee’s Photo ID law.
After several attempts, the Democrats were unable to find anyone who had been
harmed by the law, so Tennessee’s law withstood the challenges.
We now know that the Obama Administration had
moved beyond biased or politicized and into the realm of “weaponized” against
conservatives. The IRS in particular was harassing legitimate conservative
groups including True the Vote, a group that was starting to point out that the
national voting system had loopholes that could allow fraudulent registrations
and fraudulent voting.
Had Tennessee made an attempted to identify and purge
non-citizens from their voter rolls, the Obama DoJ may well have brought suit
against Tennessee with all the attendant media coverage and the typical
labeling of the Republican officials as “racists” and “xenophobes”. And the
gubernatorial aspirations of more than one Republican could have been seriously
damaged. That may have been more risk than they cared to tolerate. So, we still
do not know if the Tennessee comparison was rigorous or not.
Fraudulent Voting
One of the problems this writer experienced firsthand as an
Administrator of Elections, was that the District Attorney had very little
interest in prosecuting voter fraud when it occurred. Between 2008 and 2013 the
Davidson County Election Commission (Nashville) took approximately 60 cases of
voter fraud to the DA’s office. The DA prosecuted 5 cases. Understand that the
documentation of fraud has to be solid before the Election Commission will even
take a case to the DA. Of those cases that were prosecuted, the punishment was
typically minimal. One unprosecuted case was started by a very attentive
Officer of Elections who is one of the best and most conscientious Officers in
the county. He spent his own time to acquire documentation showing that a voter
had knowingly committed voter fraud in that Officer’s polling place. The
election commission took that documentation to the DA’s office, but they declined
to prosecute. That was demoralizing to the dedicated Officer and others who
knew about the case.
In a meeting with the DA where the Commission Chairman and I
were encouraging him to prosecute voter fraud cases, he told us that he thought
it was too difficult for people to register and vote. I was surprised that a DA had accepted claims
that are provably false. It has never been easier to register and vote than it
is now. Voters can register by mail, they can register at the driver’s license
office or any office that provides public assistance (welfare). Tennessee
counties hold voter registration drives annually inside the High Schools for
seniors who are 18 or will be 18 when the next election arrives. Registration
applications can be printed from the internet and voter registration
applications in large quantities are available for anyone who wants to go out
and register people.
When a state or federal election arrives, Davidson County
has approximately 14 days of early voting at 12 locations throughout the county
that are open all day, 6 days a week. During Early Voting, any voter who is
registered in Davidson county can walk in and vote at any of the 12 he chooses.
On election day, voters who chose not to vote during the two weeks of early
voting must vote in their assigned polling place. There are 170 polling places
for election day voting in the county. That means your precinct is not far from
your residence. Voting has never been easier. But people pushing a partisan
agenda or seeking to raise money for political purposes have said on TV and in
the newspapers, that it is too hard to register and vote. The media
never fact-checks the claim, so a lot of people believe it in spite of obvious
evidence to the contrary.
Fraudulent Voting
- ID Requirements for Voting Vary by
State
According to the
Ballotpedia
website, as of 2016, only 7 states had strict Photo ID laws. As mentioned
previously, that is a common-sense step that 80% of people support. Another 15 states
require a non-photo ID of some kind. I know from years of experience running
polling places in Tennessee that even before Photo ID was adopted, well over 90%
of the voters were already presenting their driver’s license as their ID. That
means 90+% were already showing Photo ID before the law required it. People are
used to showing the driver’s license as their ID, so a non-photo ID requirement
will usually result in a photo ID being shown anyway. However, 19 states
require no ID at all when voting, unless it is your first time and you
registered by mail. Not requiring any ID at all when voting is a clearly an opportunity
for fraudulent voting. Here is the list of states that do not require any ID
when voting and their electoral votes:
- California 55
- Illinois 20
- Iowa 6
- Maine 4
- Maryland 10
- Massachusetts 11
- Minnesota 10
- Nebraska 5
- New Jersey 14
- New Mexico 5
- New York 29
- North Carolina 15 (ID Law struck down)
- North Dakota3 (ID Law struck down)
- Oregon 7 (votes
by mail)
- Pennsylvania 20
- Washington 12
- Vermont 3
- West Virginia 5
- Wyoming 3
Note that 4 of the top 6 states in electoral votes,
California, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, are on that list. All of the states
on “No ID Required” list combined comprise 237 electoral votes which is 87% of
the 270 required to win the presidency. That many states with that many
electoral votes that require no ID to vote may be what got Trump’s attention. Again,
that is a large loophole that is wide open for fraud.
Another opportunity for fraudulent voting is absentee
ballots. It is very difficult to know if the voter or someone else actually
filled out the ballot which is then mailed in. J. Christian Adams, a former US
DoJ lawyer in the Civil Rights Division, authored a book entitled “Injustice” and in it he explains how
the US DoJ, during the Obama administration, refused to hold accountable those committing
absentee voter fraud in Mississippi.
Registering and
Voting on the Same Day
“Same day registration” means any individual can show up on
election day and if they can present evidence that they are a resident, they
can register and then vote. Most states require people to register well in
advance of the next election. That allows some time to process the application.
In Same Day Registration states, after that person casts a vote on election
day, even if their registration is later deemed improper and is purged, that
vote has already been cast. It is anonymous and cannot be removed from the
results. The following 14 states allow people to register and vote on the same
day at the voting location according to
Ballotpedia:
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- District of Columbia
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Iowa
- Maine
- Maryland
- Minnesota
- Montana
- New Hampshire
- Ohio
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
California, Ohio and Vermont have passed laws allowing Same
Day Registration but did not implement it before November 2016. Same Day Registration
facilitates the participation of people who were not engaged with the election
process at the local, state of federal level prior the day they first presented
at a polling place to vote. This allows for more people to participate.
However, the framers believed that an educated and informed electorate was
required for self-government, and that does not typically describe a same day
registrant. But, those who believe that higher turnout should take precedent
over informed voters support same day registration and are willing to leave that
loophole in place.
If same day registration requirements included full SS
numbers and technology allowed immediate verification of 1) Citizenship with
the SS Administration, 2) Residency at the address given, and, 3) Verification
that the voter was not registered in any other state, then same day registration
would not present the opportunity for fraud that it now does without such
verifications. But the loophole remains in place.
Conclusion
There are plenty of loopholes for voter fraud nationwide. And
little holes sink big ships. Have large numbers of people used the loopholes to
fraudulently register or fraudulently vote? We don’t know. We do know there are
groups actively pushing to allow non-citizens to vote in US elections. There
are entire city administrations that publicly refuse to follow federal laws on
immigration. Has that refusal to follow the law extended in to the election
process? The federal government has
refused to enforce its own immigration laws and blocked border states’ attempts to
enforce federal immigration laws. The IRS harassed conservative citizens’
groups during the Obama Administration,including those pushing for closing
loopholes in the voting system, and none of the responsible people were fired. Against
this backdrop, it is absolutely reasonable for concerned citizens to wonder if our
registration and voting procedures have been compromised.
There may be large scale voter fraud. Some knowledgeable
people believe that, including the President of the US. On the other hand, there
may be nothing more than the typical “background noise”of a few bad votes here
and there as others believe. But to insist there is “no problem” while refusing
to even look, defies common sense. And no one at the national level has had the
courage to even talk about it, until now.
Albert Tieche is a former
Administrator of Elections for Davidson County, Tennessee. He began serving as an
Officer of Elections in 2002. From 2003 to 2008 he designed and delivered the required
training on election law and procedures to election-day poll officials. He
served as Administrator from 2011 to 2013. Steve Abernathy, former Davidson
County Election Commissioner, assisted with the article.
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