Opinion

OP-ED: Is Voting Fraud Real?

Published

10 years ago

October 22, 2014

“Why does death have to stop love? It doesn’t stop people from voting in Chicago?” ~ Jarod Kintz

We have all heard the humorous quips about voter fraud. “Vote early and vote often” is a common phrase. But is voter fraud real?

All U.S. citizens who have reached the age of eighteen and who are non felons and not currently incarcerated and may register to vote within in the district where they reside. In a world filled with dictators and monarchs, America is one of the few democracies. The dictionary defines democracy as :

“government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.”

For a democracy to be sustained the integrity of the ballot box must be above reproach. It is a federal crime for an illegal alien to register to vote or to vote in U.S. elections and yet Project Veritas discovered that twelve thousand noncitizens registered to vote in Colorado and apparently five thousand of those voted in 2010.

*In December 2012 a 61 year old Belleville, NJ man was sentenced to five years in prison for submitting phony absentee ballots while he was working on the 2007 election campaign of State Sen. Teresa Ruiz.

*In December 2013 Ohio Secretary of State John Husted announced that his office found 17 non-citizens illegally cast ballots in the 2012 presidential election.

*Per the December 30. 2013 New York Post article The dead can vote in NYC, “Investigators posing as dead voters were allowed to cast ballots for this year’s primary and general elections, thanks to antiquated Board of Elections registration records and lax oversight by poll workers, authorities said. Undercover DOI agents were able to access voting booths 61 instances, including 39 dead people, 14 jail birds and eight non-residents.”

* In Iowa a two year investigation recently uncovered 117 illegally cast votes resulting in six criminal convictions. The crimes included non-citizen voting and felony voting.

* Per the Taunton Daily Gazette, June 10, 2014 article, “a Massachusetts man pled guilty to illegally voting in both the 2008 and 2012 NH primaries. He was charged with one felony count and two misdemeanor counts of wrongful voting under NH law for traveling from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to cast votes in both primaries. He was fined $5,000 and given a suspended prison term of one to three years.

Karen Watson is author of the book, “Being Black and Republican in the Age of Obama”. Email karen.watson@gopbuzz.com

* Last month Bridgeport State Rep. Christina Ayala was arrested on 19 charges of voting fraud including, eight misdemeanor counts of fraudulent voting, ten felony of primary or enrollment violations and one felony count of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence. Ms. Ayala was released on a promise to appear for arraignment at Bridgeport Superior Court on October 7, 2014, the charges are merely accusations and she is presumed innocent unless and until she is found guilty.

In bold script the preamble to our Constitution begins with the words, We The People, and what voter fraud does is to make a mockery of our very fragile democracy. Voter fraud is not just a crime against our system of government it is a crime against every American!