An Associated Press review of potential cases of voter fraud in the six battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — found fewer than 475 cases. That number would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election, according to an article on apnews.com.
The review was directed toward the six states that were disputed by former President Donald Trump.
Most Americans will likely be pleased with this determination. And while this review found a tiny fraction of the vote fraud needed to prove a stolen election, it also reminds us that the election systems in the 50 states are not fraud-proof, and with the mid-term election coming up in less than a year, we would be smart to examine our election procedures and methods and make them more secure.
By contrast, The Lincoln Institute published a report saying, “the fact of the matter is that the 2020 election had hundreds of thousands of votes counted that should not have been, and the distribution of those votes could have affected the outcome in several closely-decided states.
Many will choose to believe one; many will choose to believe the other. Which one is more accurate?
With tens of millions of people voting in thousands of polling places, and with tens of thousands of election workers in those polling places, it would be a miracle of epic proportions if there weren’t any problems or crimes. Therefore, we can acknowledge, without calling an election stolen, that there is fraud, abuse and carelessness in every election. The only question is, how much?
The AP review focused on only six states and found an average of 79 issues in each state. How many other examples of fraud existed, but were not discovered?
Here are some methods of cheating in elections, according to The Heritage Foundation:
• Forging voter signatures on candidate ballot qualification petitions.
• Voting in someone else’s name in person or through absentee ballots.
• Registering and voting under a false identity or in a district where the individual does not actually reside.
• Submitting fraudulent, altered, or forged absentee ballots.
• Registering in multiple locations within a state or in different states to vote multiple times in the same election.
• People voting even though they’re not eligible because they’re felons or noncitizens.
• Paying, coercing, or intimidating people to vote for certain candidates.
In addition, the U.S. Constitution mandates that election procedures are to be controlled by state legislatures. Officials in four of the battleground states mentioned previously — Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — changed election procedures in the 2020 election by circumventing legislative action. Assuming the best of intentions on the part of the wrongdoers, these changes were nonetheless illegal/unconstitutional. Were any election results — local, state or national — affected by these actions?
In a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 where the Court upheld Indiana’s voter-ID law by a 6-3 margin, Justice John Paul Stevens, who is not a conservative justice, said in the majority opinion that “flagrant examples of such fraud … have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists … that demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real, but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.”
“Absentee ballots are the tools of choice of vote thieves,” Heritage noted, “because they are the only ballots cast outside the supervision of election officials and outside the observation of poll watchers, destroying the transparency of the election process that is a fundamental hallmark of a healthy democracy.”
Heritage produced the “Election Integrity Scorecard — Assessing the Status of State Election Fairness and Security.” Here are some of the results. Finishing in first place, with a score of 83, is Georgia. Coming in last, with a score of 26, is Hawaii. Virginia scored 67, and placed 15th, while West Virginia placed 30th, with a score of 54.
In its discussion of the condition of our elections, Heritage reported, “In 2012, the Pew Foundation released a report on the voter registration systems maintained by the states. The report found that:
• Approximately 24 million — one in every eight — voter registrations were either no longer valid or significantly inaccurate.
• More than 1.8 million deceased individuals were listed as voters.
• Approximately 2.75 million individuals were registered in more than one state.”
These weaknesses invite fraud, and must be corrected.
The list of things one cannot do in America without a valid photo-ID is long, and includes: buying alcohol or cigarettes; opening a bank account; applying for food stamps, social security, and many jobs; and get on an airliner. Photo IDs are generally pretty easy to acquire, and every voter should be required to have one.
Elections are too important to have security methods weakened, for example, just to make voting easy. The easier it is to vote, the easier it is to cheat. If Americans have to sacrifice a little convenience in the name of election security, so be it.
Our elections must be made more secure. That is fundamental in a democratic republic like the United States, where the people select those who serve them in all levels of government. We cannot depend upon an honor system to guarantee free and fair elections.
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