[article]
Brief discussion regarding the United States
‘Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” That quote isn’t from President Trump. It’s the conclusion of the bipartisan 2005 report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III.
Concerns about vote-buying have a long history in the U.S. They helped drive the move to the secret ballot, which U.S. states adopted between 1888 and 1950. Secret ballots made it harder for vote buyers to monitor which candidates sellers actually voted for. Vote-buying had been pervasive; voter turnout fell by about 8% to 12% after states adopted the secret ballot because people were no longer being paid to vote.
For example, as a result of fraud in their 1988 Presidential election, absentee ballots were not allowed in Mexico until 2006. Intimidation and vote buying were key concerns of the commission: “Citizens who vote at home, at nursing homes, at the workplace, or in church are more susceptible to pressure, overt and subtle, or to intimidation. Vote buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.” The report provides examples, such as the 1997 Miami mayoral election that resulted in 36 arrests for absentee-ballot fraud. The election had to be rerun, and the result was reversed.
Another famous example was a 1994 Pennsylvania race that gave Democrats control of the state Senate. Democratic candidate William Stinson’s staff forged the names on absentee ballots of people at nursing homes as well as people who were living in Puerto Rico or serving time in prison. The federal judge overseeing the case found that “Substantial evidence was presented establishing massive absentee ballot fraud,” and he awarded the seat and control of the state Senate to Republicans.
There are more recent cases, too. In 2017 an investigation of a Dallas City Council election found some 700 fraudulent mail-in ballots signed by the same witness using a fake name. The discovery left two council races in limbo, and the fraud was much larger than the vote differential in one of those races. The case resulted in a criminal conviction. In a 2018 North Carolina congressional race, Republican Mark Harris edged out Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes.Fortun ately, the state had relatively complete absentee-ballot records. Election officials became suspicious when they discovered that the Republican received 61% of mail-in votes, even though registered Republicans accounted for only 19% of those who had requested mail-in ballots. A Republican operative, L. McCrae Dowless Jr., had allegedly requested more than 1,200 absentee ballots on voters’ behalf and then collected the ballots from voters’ homes when they were mailed out. Mr. Dowless’s assistants testified that they were directed to forge voters’ signatures and fill in votes. A new election was required, but Mr. Harris didn’t run. Mr. Dowless faces criminal charges for absentee-ballot fraud in both the 2016 and 2018 elections and has pled not guilty. A month after California’s March 3, 2020, primary election, even Democratic Secretary of State Alex Padilla confirmed that at least a dozen people had both received two mail-in ballots in their name and voted in the March 3, 2020 election. With the all mail-in voting expected in the November 2020 California election, the Election Integrity Project found that about 458,000 California registrants who have likely died or moved will be mailed ballots, since while they have died or moved, they remain classified as “active” voters.
While it is possible for dead people to vote via mail-in ballots, but they can’t do in-person voting when Voter IDs are required. CBS Channel 2 in Los Angeles in 2016 found 265 dead people who had supposedly voted year-after-year after their deaths using mail-in ballots. Mail-in ballots raise problems just because they are not secure. Just this year, at an apartment building in Paterson, New Jersey, “a stack of ballots [was left] sitting on top of the mailbox because these are people that have moved away.” Others could have simply taken these ballots and voted with them. Indeed, Patterson appears to be a hotbed of attempted fraud. This only seems to have been uncovered by the sloppiness of how those committing the fraud mailed in the ballots, though this case also illustrates how hard it is to determine who committed the fraud.
Just a week ago, felony convictions have been successfully brought against four men paying homeless people in Los Angeles for their votes on mail-in ballots. It is often claimed that impossibly large numbers of people live at the same address. In 2016, 83 registered voters in San Pedro, Calif., received absentee ballots at the same small two-bedroom apartment. Prosecutors rarely pursue this type of case. A much longer list of recent vote fraud cases in the United States has been collected by the Crime Prevention Research Center and they are available at our website (
https://crimeresearch.org/2020/05/examples-of-vote-fraud-for-mail-in-ballots/).
Mail-in voting is a throwback to the dark old days of vote-buying and fraud. Like most of the rest of the world, Americans deserve a more trustworthy system.
[/article]