Because President Bush won Ohio by more votes than Cleveland Democrats were able to steal, vote fraud (the real thing, that is, not the Loony Left fantasies about how Diebold rigged all the voting machines) hasn’t been a hot post-election topic. Had Ohio been closer, matters would be different. We would be hearing a lot about the counties with more voters than citizens old enough to vote, as well as about dubious ballots in Philadelphia, Detroit, Madison and other locales in states that went narrowly for John Kerry.
That fraud did not swing this election is not a good reason to go to sleep. The invaluable OpinionJournal Political Diary (subscription only, but a bargain at $3.95 a month) offers a reminder from another close state, New Mexico, where Democrats are trying to keep Republicans from watching the last stages of the count:
Yesterday afternoon, Democratic Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron asked the state Supreme Court to overturn lower court ruling that had allowed Republican observers into the polls in Sandoval and Dona Ana counties. She also seeks to overturn a decision by the Bernalillo County Clerk to allow observers there. In her court filing, she contends state law doesn't provide for challengers to be part of the review process.
But cynics point out that she filed her petition shortly after the Bernalillo County Clerk told media outlets that observers had discovered instances of voter fraud during the qualification of provisional ballots. Provisional votes are cast by people whose names did not appear on registration rolls but nonetheless were allowed to vote pending verification of their eligibility. In counting the first 5,000 provisional ballots in Bernalillo County, observers turned up 53 instances of individuals voting more than once. They also found four voters who were dead and dozens of felons attempting to vote. In two cases, the same individual tried to vote three times: early, absentee and on Election Day.
Double voting appears to fall into two categories: voters who themselves may have voted multiple times, and those whose votes were essentially stolen. Dwight Atkins of Albuquerque attempted to vote on Election Day, only to discover that someone had already voted early in his name. Rosemary McGee showed up to vote at 3 pm on Election Day. But someone had voted in her place at 7:00am (the imposter actually misspelled her name on the signature roster). Both were shocked to learn that if an imposter votes first, the fraudulent ballot will stand, and the provisional ballot, cast later by the legitimate voter, will be disqualified.
Earlier this year, when Secretary of State Vigil-Giron went to court to prevent expanded enforcement of the state’s requirement that first-time voters show a photo ID, New Mexico Democrats insisted voter fraud didn’t exist in New Mexico. So much for that argument. But now it appears that local Democrats are willing to go to court to make sure more evidence of it doesn't turn up.
Making dishonest election practices more difficult ought to be among the highest Republican priorities. Actually, it should be a high priority for all honest citizens, and I retain the hope that plenty of honest Democrats concur, despite the maneuvers of a few of their party’s “leaders”.
Addendum: By virtue of the comment from Kevin Standlee, this post is now included in the “Science Fiction” category as well as the obvious ones. Incidentally, the 14-hour tally at the 1991 Worldcon was turbo speed compared to the Washington State gubernatorial count this year. One begins to wonder whether Washingtonians will know the identity of their new governor before the old one leaves office!
Stories such as these make me feel much better about the elections we hold for WSFS site selection and the Hugo Awards. As you know, representatives from all filed bids are guaranteed at least two seats in the counting room. Indeed, most of the time it would be impossible to count the ballots without them, as we usually form them up into teams consisting of one from each bid plus the official convention represenative. Sure, it took us 14 hours to count the ballots in 1991, but that was only because nobody was checking off eligibility as the people voted -- in effect, every ballot was what we'd call a "provisional" ballot today. That check took 12 hours for around 2000 ballots; acutally counting them only took two hours, and that was with a paper ballot. And as I recall, there were no double-votes or any cases of obvious fraud that we could determine. There were a few people who were incapable of following simple instructions who thereby generated illegal (unable to determine voter's preferences) ballots, but that's different, and even in the very close 1994 Worldcon race that year, it wasn't enough to make a difference.
People periodically tell me that Worldcons should start using electronic voting of some sort, including bar-coding members' badges and similar nonsense. I keep replying, "Why? What would we gain, and how much would it cost to get it?" Nobody has ever given me a convincing answer to that question.
Posted by: Kevin Standlee | Wednesday, November 10, 2004 at 11:11 AM