John Fund Quotes

Hawaii has a history of election fraud going back at least to 1982, when the political and legal community were shocked by a voter registration scandal involving University of Hawaii law school students who illegally registered voters for a Democratic candidate for the state house, Ross Segawa. They were caught when volunteers for his opponent noticed that these youthful supporters of Segawa were registered at the Arcadia Retirement Residence. An investigation by the city prosecutor’s office led to Segawa’s conviction on ten counts of election fraud, criminal solicitation and evidence tampering, for which he served sixty days in prison… In another case of election fraud, an Oahu grand jury indicted state legislator Gene Albano in 1983 for illegally registering voters in his Kalihi Kai-Iwilei House District, and a decade later he was finally convicted of voter registration fraud. Governor Cayetano pardoned both Segawa and Albano in 2000 and appointed several other students in the University of Hawaii law school voter registration scandal to high-ranking government jobs.

The [National Voter Registration Act of 1993] imposed an unfunded mandate on the states by requiring that anyone entering a government office to renew a driver’s license or apply for welfare or unemployment compensation would be offered the chance to register on the spot to vote. Examiners were under orders not to ask anyone for identification or proof of citizenship. States also had to permit mail-in voter registration, which allowed anyone to register without any personal contact with a registrar or election official. Finally, states were limited in pruning ‘deadwood’—people who had died, moved or been convicted of crimes—from their rolls. Now, people who didn’t vote would be kept on the registration rolls for at least eight years before anyone could remove them.

The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) requires the Federal Voting Assistance Program (a Department of Defense program) to administer UOCAVA, and requires the Justice Department to enforce it. One of the most significant problems with UOCAVA is that it does not specify when states are required to mail absentee ballots to overseas military voters. Every federal agency and nonprofit group examining the issue, including the Election Assistance Commission, had concluded that, to provide enough time for absentee ballots to be returned from overseas, they would need to be sent out at least 45 days before a state’s deadline for receiving absentee ballots. Yet nearly one-third of states refuse to follow the 45-day standard, and at least 10 states gave military voters less than 35 days to receive, cast, and return their ballots.

Voter ID might also help prevent double-voting by someone who is registered in two states. In 2004, a comparison of the voter registration rolls in North and South Carolina by the Charlotte Observerfound more than 60,000 people who were registered in two states, at least 180 of whom were listed ‘as having voted in both states in either the 2000 or 2002 general election.’

The NPV plan strikes at the Founders’ view of federalism and a representative republic—one where popular sovereignty is balanced by structural protection for state governments and minority interests. It like would violate the Constitution’s Compact Clause. In an age of perceived political dysfunction, effective policies that already are in place—especially successful policies established by this nation’s Founders, like the Electoral College—should be preserved.

All county the municipal election authorities should be required to have independent audits conducted of their voter tabulation systems, software and security procedures on a regular basis. In business, companies undergo outside audits by independent bodies to confirm to their stockholders that the companies are truthfully reporting on their financial condition and status.

Some registration scandals have been comic. In Broward County, Florida, for example, an eight-year-old girl successfully registered to vote. The error would not have been caught if the girl hadn’t been called for jury duty, whereupon her mother called the election supervisors to report the mistake. More improbably, an elephant at the San Diego zoo was successfully registered to vote.

Attorney General Holder is a staunch opponent of laws requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls to improve ballot security. He calls them ‘unnecessary,’ and has blocked their implementation in Texas and South Carolina under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, citing the fear that such requirements would discriminate against minorities.

A similar investigation by the New York Daily News of voting rolls in New York City and Florida found 46,000 individuals registered in both states, 68 percent of whom were Democrats; 12 percent were Republicans, and 16 percent didn’t claim a party. Between 400 and 1,000 individuals voted in both states in at least one election—this in Florida, where the presidential election was decided in 2000 by 537 votes—and some of the registered voters double-voted in multiple elections.

The Florida battle returned to the news as the 2004 election approached in w:Michael Moore Michael Moore’s hit film Fahrenheit 9/11, which begins with a malicious account of what happened in 2000. In essence, Moore claims that George W. Bush, aided by Florida’s Republican secretary of state w: Katherine Harris Katherine Harris and the FOX News Channel, stole the election—and that everyone knows it.

Absentee-ballot fraud in particular is difficult to control. It is ‘the tool of choice’ for those who are engaging in election fraud,’ as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded in its investigation of the 1997 Miami mayoral election. The results of that election were thrown out because of massive fraud involving more than five thousand absentee ballots, andThe Miami Heraldwon a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for its innovative investigation into the voter fraud. With the increasing use of no-fault absentee voting and all-mail elections, there is the real risk that fraud will affect more election results and potentially wipe out voting rights hard won by the civil rights movement.

There is no question that every individual who is eligible to vote should have the opportunity to do so. It is equally important, however, that the votes of eligible voters are not stolen or diluted by a fraudulent or bogus ballot cast by an ineligible or imaginary voter. The evidence from academic studies and actual turnout in elections is overwhelming that—contrary to the shrill claims of opponents—voter ID does not depress turnout, including among the ranks of minority, poor, and elderly voters, which exist; the real myth is the claim that voters are disenfranchised because of voter ID requirements.

The current toxic political atmosphere, in which one side is concerned about voter fraud and the other about voter disfranchisement, is largely the product of the elephant in the parlor left over from the 2000 election. Of course, I’m talking about the Florida recount, the gold standard for botched elections, and all the bitter recriminations it launched.

In New Hampshire, three of [ James O’Keefe’s ] assistants visited precincts during the state’s January 2012 presidential primary. They asked poll workers whether their books bore the names of several voters, all deceased individuals still listed on voter registration rolls. Poll workers handed out 10 ballots, never once asking for a photo ID. The ballots were immediately given back, unmarked, to precinct workers. New Hampshire Governor John Lynch James , who had vetoed a state photo ID bill, sputtered when asked about O’Keefe’s videos, focusing on the messenger, rather than his message—that polls are dangerously vulnerable to fraud. ‘They should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, if in fact they’re found guilty of some criminal act,’ he roared.

Reform is easy to talk about, but difficult to bring about. Many of the suggested improvements, such as requiring voters to show ID at the polls, are bitterly opposed. For instance, Maria Cardona, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, claims that ‘ballot security and preventing voter fraud are just code words for voter intimidation and suppression.’