With 50 states and nearly 130 million votes in 2012, a significant amount of voter data is assembled across state lines, however; of all this data collection only three entities are checking for illegal duplicate voting. While True the Vote, an organization to sustain democratic elections, found that at least 300,000 people are double registered in two states and could potentially vote twice.
The cause is a complete lack of interstate communication reinforcing the ability to commit fraud.
True the Vote and Pew Research both use a system entitled the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) which collates registration data from states in order to check for fraudulent registration. ERIC reports that 1 of 8 registration records are not accurate, opening the door to fraud. ERIC checks through several levels of state databases in order to find discrepancies and notify the state.
Yet only 21 states have joined the ERIC effort, leaving 29 states completely absent from the data. While a voter attempting to register in both Virginia and Maryland would receive a letter to select the registration they are keeping, a voter attempting to register in both Virginia and Florida would be fine under the ERIC system.
Even the rivalling system created by the Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, called the Interstate Crosscheck or “The Kansas Project” collects data from 35 opted-in states, still leaving 15 unprotected. In 2012 six cases of deliberate double voting were sent to the FBI due to the Kansas Projects efforts.
Even these databases face significant challenges in receiving information, not because of voter inaccuracies, but states’ unwillingness to assist with up to date information. In an interview with True the Vote representative Logan Churchwell, he described the challenge of facilitating communication between states. Often states charge significant amounts for voter data, do not have in-house safeguards to duplicated voter registrations, and rely on slow, mail driven campaign to encourage the removal of second registrations that can take years.
For example, a Pew Research report coupled with analysis from the United States Elections Project showed that while a Washington D.C. voter list is 2 dollars, an Arizona list is 32,500 dollars. It would cost a U.S. citizen 126,482 dollars to purchase all the voter lists available nationwide. Yet all this is still considered public information.
Just as a voter registration “official” encouraged me to vote twice for Hillary Clinton in Virginia and Florida, if one state is not part of these databases or was slow to catch up to a fraudulent voter, it would seem almost anyone could vote twice.
As Churchwell explains, while a significant amount of the duplicate registrations are individuals moving homes or passing away, there is an available and unknown threat of voter fraud which can be detrimental in elections. He made clear, True the Vote does not advocate for a national federalized election system, but rather for each state to enact their responsibility to provide a fair election process.
When the union between these databases and governments occur, success has already been proven. True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht said in a September 2015 press release,
Now, ahead of an incredibly consequential 2016 election cycle… North Carolina is helping to break a national cycle of carelessness by using True the Vote research to clean up voter rolls in ten of its largest counties… in just the past few weeks [we] found thousands of clearly duplicated voter registrations in North Carolina. Our goal now is to collaborate with these North Carolina counties to ensure that legitimate voters are registered once — and only once.”
Maintaining free and fair elections is a primary responsibility of state governments, but the high costs and slow responses of states to the problem of voter duplication opens a clear avenue for fraud. States who reject to even become members of the database successfully neglect the reality of fraud, by pretending the issue does not exist.
Natalia Castro is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.
5 comments
[…] States must coordinate in order to stop voter registration fraud […]
I can’t count the number of times per day I have to present photo id for the most mundane reasons, so it seems more than a little odd that our voting system is less protected. But I can’t help seeing this issue as one of fact AND one of emotion. Unless we advocate in a way that convinces on both levels, nothng’s going to change. I see two problems with the author’s proposed approach:
*the author advocates for nationwide access to state voter lists, to promote oversight. While the fair play advocate in each of us might cheer, the small government advocate in each of us might be uneasy abbout the approach of federal control in state voting.
*The author gives life to the fear of fraud with her ostensibly (I start from the assumption of honesty) honest account about being encouraged to vote twice. Another voter describes being harrassed by a voting official at the polls http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article66929422.html. Could both accounts be honest? I believe so.
And North Carolina legislators didn’t help when they decided to reject the use of state issued id’s whose users were predominantly black https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/appeals-court-strikes-down-north-carolinas-voter-id-law/2016/07/29/810b5844-4f72-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html. Why not simply enact consistent standards for the issue of all state id? Virginia appears to work with that http://elections.virginia.gov/casting-a-ballot/in-person-voting/
I submit the solution lies in part with states employing proper standards of id card issue.
Vote Early … and often.
Even backward countries have solved this problem. Indelible ink stamp or thumb dip. I know, I know. Democrats would find a way to object. But there is a simple solution.
But there is no problem to solve. Show the evidence of voter fraud and the story changes. Without the evidence, how can anyone believe the problem exists!