Since President Trump’s announcement of 3-5 million non-citizens voting in the last election and subsequently calling for an investigation, I have received calls from friends and colleagues asking me if the Virginia Voters Alliance will be involved in the investigation. These questions are premature since the administration has not yet produced any announcements regarding charter, organization, or funding for such an endeavor.
It has been interesting to see how the leftist media, including several reporters on Fox News, have already come to the conclusion that President Trump has to be delusional to believe that 3-5 million non-citizens have voted in our most recent election. They may be willing to buy 10 fraudulent votes but not 3-5 million. NPR and Fox talking head, Mara Liasson, made the statement during a White House press briefing, that 3-5 million illegal votes would be a monumental scandal, I’m not sure how she would classify 500,000 or 1-2 million. I can hear the media now claiming that President Trump was either wrong or lying when the investigation yields only 2.5 million non-citizens voting.
Anyway, there are some positive aspects about the topic of voter fraud being at the forefront of public discourse; especially to those of us who have been working in this area for years and listening to Leftists denying the existence of even a “smidgen” of vote fraud. Usually, there is a flurry of interest and concern when a major election is eminent. Then after the election a few reports of anecdotal voter fraud being observed but not reported at the time trickle in, everyone licks their wounds, depending on the election results, and then goes about their business as usual. The persistent problem of voter fraud is forgotten until the next election cycle. With the President’s attention to this problem, the opportunity arises to really determine the extent and causes of voter fraud in American elections and make recommendations to insure that our elections are free, fair, and trustworthy by all Americans. The following are my thoughts regarding the possible investigation.
To begin, we need to understand what we are talking about. Voter fraud is a criminal act that at best would be hard to prove; just our guarantee that our votes for a candidate are anonymous only adds to the difficulty. It is not like a murder or robbery where physical evidence, eye witnesses, motives, and video point us to the crime and criminal. Voter fraud is done in private and the perpetrators are highly motivated to avoid detection. Preventing voter fraud while voting is a non-starter and the Left is very aware of this conundrum and exploits it whenever possible.
If the investigation ever gets off the ground, it needs to focus on three components of voter fraud. The first focus should be on what I call the precursors of voter fraud. A good analogy would be detecting the meth-amphetamine problem. It is difficult to stop meth since it is sold to individuals usually in a private environment and even if the seller and buyer are caught the overall impact is minimal. To really have an impact on this scourge is to identify and monitor the precursor ingredients that are used to manufacture meth. The same approach is used against moonshiners when they are buying large quantities of corn, sugar, and yeast.
The precursors of voter fraud are our election laws, both Federal and state, that setup conditions that fraudsters exploit. For example, if we don’t want non-citizens voting in our elections, quit allowing Leftist groups to register them in the first place. Kansas and Arizona tried to change the Federal Voter Registration card to require Proof of Citizenship to register and vote in Federal Elections. The courts rejected their request when the League of Women Voters filed an Amicus Brief claiming that their voter registration drives would be hampered if they were required to prove citizenship of everyone they registered.
If we think it is unlawful for Nursing Home facilities to “vote harvest” by victimizing their patients, then require facility owners and administrators to be accountable for any voter fraud committed in their facility with tough fines and incarceration if found guilty.
If we want to stop students in college from double voting, then require our institutions of higher learning to provide to their local registrars confidential lists of their foreign and out-of-state students so registrars can check if they are eligible to register or if they are registered in their home state. The current clown show regarding a student’s residence vs. domicile and rather they “plan” on staying in our state is nothing more than a Leftist’s obfuscation of reality that Republicans have inadvertently bought into.
If we want to stop vote selling, then significantly reduce those eligible to use the Absentee Vote by Mail and taking ballot selfies in polling places.
If we want to make sure that opportunities for voter impersonation are eliminated from our elections, quit diluting Virginia’s Photo Identification Law with canards like Employer and Student IDs and only allow government issued IDs. What Election Official will know if the student ID from Poquoson Polytechnic Institute is valid as presented or if that school even exists? It doesn’t. What Election Official would know if any employer’s ID is valid, the company is a Virginia business, or even exists at all? Why do you think the Democrats were trying to expand Employer IDs to any employer in America? Indeed, why stop there; after all, there are International employers to consider.
Below are images of the photo ID card used in Mexico. Mexico has a lot of problems, but open and honest elections are not one of them. Mexico has over 90,000,000 people registered to vote with this type of ID card and their poor, minorities, aged, and students do not have a problem with them at all. They know from experience what meaningless, corrupt, and rigged elections can do to a country. BTW: India has the same type of card for their population. I’m not talking about a National Registry of Voters. The last thing I want for this country is the Federal Government having anything to do with voter registrations.
Before trying to make the argument that all of these changes are a solution looking for a problem, since there are no convictions for voter fraud, increase felony penalties for individuals that commit fraudulent acts and significantly increase penalties for individuals that perpetrate and organize voter fraud. It would also help if Commonwealth Attorneys were required to investigate and bring to trial suspects when voter fraud is alleged. The “no convictions” argument is self-fulfilling when many Democrat Commonwealth Attorneys refuse to prosecute obvious voter fraud.
Another precursor that needs to be addressed is the institutionalization of voter fraud in America. Obamacare was engineered from the beginning to be an unconfirmed feed of potential voter registrations with data that was never checked or verified. Where do you think the millions of newly insured each year were repurposed as newly registered voters? Why do you think Moto-Voter, originating in the Clinton Administration, was designed from the beginning to be setup not only in DMV offices nationwide but welfare offices in its many forms? The Democrats, time after time, out maneuver Republican law makers. Is Motor Voter a bad idea? Certainly not. Was it thought through non-citizens were prohibited to register to vote? Absolutely not.
Last but not least on the precursor list is Voter Roll Maintenance, also called List Maintenance. Currently the Virginia database of voters, VERIS, contains over 5 million registered voters. The Virginia Voters Alliance did several analyses of the VERIS system data. In VERIS today are around 641,000 active voters who have never voted in any election. I don’t mean voters who recently registered but forgot to vote in the last election. We are talking not voting for 15 – 20 years. There are probably a certain number that are recently registered but why would anyone bother to register and never vote, even if it is their right to do so? Why are our General Registrars not the slightest bit curious as to why these people never vote? Are they dead, moved, ghosts, or what?
The National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) requires registrars to make voters inactive for at least two Federal Elections before being removed from the VERIS system. VVA ran an aging analysis of Inactive Coded Voters and found 380,000 voters that have been inactive since 2011 and prior. Why are these voters still in VERIS? Since the 2016 Election, that total is now around 450,000 voters who need to be removed. A good question to ask Virginia’s SBE would be “When will this be done?”
Another example is Section 8 of the NVRA that requires that our SBE/ELECT maintain proper voting lists. Virginia has participated in the Interstate Cross Check program for years. This program was the brain child of Kris Kobach, Secretary of State in Kansas. It is notable that most participants in this program have Republican Governors as sponsors, where Democrat Governors refuse to participate. Virginia’s Governor just ignores the results. Currently, there are 30 states participating in the cross check of voter data which has determined that Virginia shares registrations with over 350,000 voters registered in Virginia and at least one other state. Virginia law specifies that when SBE receives information regarding residents who have moved that data is to be turned over to the Local Registrars so they can perform their due diligence process and remove those voters from VERIS. This has not been done by the current Democrat members of the SBE and the Department of Elections, selectively deciding to execute only the sections of Virginia Law that they like and which fits with their agenda.
Which brings me to the last element of my precursor list, which is the Virginia Code itself. I have been shocked at the number of sections of our Election laws that are worded in generalities and vagueness, and that are clouded by the unintended consequences of bad legislation. It has been more than evident with the McAuliffe Administration, where whole sections of the code are ignored or interpreted to suit their agenda. At some point in the near future there needs to be a commission to review code section 24.2 with the intent to be more specific about requirements, processes, and procedures. As a suggestion, it might be appropriate to put in penalties for failure of bureaucrats to comply with black letter law, otherwise future Democrat administrations will treat our laws like they are merely suggestions.
In conclusion, making or defending arguments of voter fraud especially when the left tricks one into numbers is not an easy argument. By definition fraudulent voting is done in private, which makes it hard to prove in court. If it was easy to prove and convict the Left would not be out recruiting people to do it. Their promise to the potential fraudster is it is easy to do, no one checks; if you are caught, it is hard to prove and convict; and if need be, the Left they will provide legal counsel free of charge. It is all upside and no downside for the fraudulent voter. We must be smarter than them and attack the precursors of voter fraud. That is the only way to trust our elections again.
One night several years ago I received a phone call from a citizen in Santa Fe, New Mexico where his administrative assistant, a green card holder, told him that she was proud to have voted in the 2012 Presidential Election. She was encouraged to register to vote in a shopping mall by several members of the League of Women Voters, telling her that having a green card allowed her to vote in America. When she appeared at the polling place to vote she used her green card as her ID with no problem. Her employer was even more shocked when she informed him that most of her acquaintances in her apartment project were either green card holders or illegals and most of them had voted also.
So, could there be 3-5 million non-citizens voting in our elections, what do you think?
THIS JUST IN: I have it from a reliable source that the California Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State have instructed the Information Technology department in the state’s DMV department to immediately remove the “AB60” code from all records of non-citizens that have received a California Driver’s License. This would make proving that these people are non-citizens and have voted difficult if not impossible. Why would they do this if only 10 non-citizens voted in this election? If I were President Trump, I would start my investigation with these three.
Last year The Bull Elephant published my article on leftist voter fraud strategies. You can find it here: “2016 Voter Fraud Strategies Identified.
Reagan George is President of the Virginia Voter’s Alliance.
