Voter Fraud In Iowa?

(this report and analysis is still developing)

North Carolina (the other pork state)

Yesterday we advised readers of recent news stories about potential voter fraud focused on North Carolina with implications for Iowa. Investigations there resulted from the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program (IVRCP).  Iowa along with 28 other states  is a member the consortium. Indeed Iowa was one of the first to join. Other articles about the North Carolina investigation have come to our attention since then.

Fox news reported on Thursday  Hundreds of cases of potential voter fraud uncovered in North Carolina,  that report included information from the Associated Press. Independently, the Washington Free Beacon reported North Carolina Investigating Hundreds of Potential Voter Fraud Cases

Note that the number of cases referred for investigation is in the hundreds rather than the thousands as otherwise implicated in the IVRCP findings. Further checking for the most unassailable matches eliminated most of those initially identified   The process of sifting through them often turns up instances of a voter moving from one state to another and not informing the voter registrar of the move.

Certainly other exonerating circumstances could pertain. Names could be spelled wrong or birth dates recorded wrong and there is the possibility of  actual coincidences of name and birth date. The latter not likely to comprise more than a fraction of the reported same name / same birth date multi-state voting.

But the report from North Carolina’s Civitas Institute provides more useful information than the reporting originating out of state. They summarize official statements regarding the investigation. Their report indicates that sifting of the data has been thorough prior to any referrals.

According to Civitas the preliminary findings indicate that:

    765 voters with an exact match of first and last name, DOB and last four digits of SSN were registered in N.C. and another state and voted in N.C. and the other state in the 2012 general election.

35,750* voters with the same first and last name and DOB were registered in N.C. and another state and voted in both states in the 2012 general election.

155,692 voters with the same first and last name, DOB and last four digits of SSN were registered in N.C. and another state – and the latest date of registration or voter activity did not take place within N.C.

. . .  given that only 28 states participate in the interstate crosscheck, it is reasonable to believe that the numbers for potential voter fraud would be much higher if all 50 states participated in the program. Populous states such as Florida, Texas, California and New York are among the 22 states that did not participate in the 2014 crosscheck.

The Civitas summary to our understanding does not sufficiently explain how the elimination of dual voting activity at different times in different states (third paragraph above) necessarily suggests no fraud if the voting took place within the parameters of time allotted for absentee voting. That scenario might not have been part of the investigation but should be.

Iowa

As we reported previously, the results of the 2012 election crosscheck for Iowa is that the  system produced 100,140 people with the same name and birth date who may have voted in more than one state. How many were fraudulent is unknown but the raw number is staggering and speaks to the importance of anti-fraud measures and the usefulness of the IVRCP.

Whether Secretary of State Schultz  in his investigations of voter fraud in Iowa sifted through the IVRCP data or  used other methodologies, instead of or in addition to IVRCP, is not clear to us at this writing. We do know that he has had Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI) agents looking into cases his department identified as meriting further investigation (which may simply mean more likely to garner a conviction apart from other merits).

A little over a month prior to the North Carolina news breaking, John Fund writing at National Review online, referencing Iowa, responded to accusations that investigating voter fraud is something hateful, unnecessary, and extremely rare.

Well, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation disagrees. Not a state known for its hateful politics, Iowa’s DCI wrapped up its investigation this month (February 2014) and has referred more than 80 cases of voter fraud to county attorneys for possible prosecution. Since the investigation was initiated by GOP Secretary of State Matt Schultz a year and a half ago, five people have pleaded guilty to voter fraud and 15 others are facing charges.

We suspect that many of the raw IVRCP numbers for Iowa and actual fraudulent voting may relate to students and the possibility of them voting or being “encouraged” to vote in more than one state. This later aspect was evident to us in the 2008 election and we suspect in previous and subsequent elections. Such encouragement, with the approval our incompetence of two colleges in Davenport, was probably not lost on “enthusiastic” students who had addresses out of state. We doubt the possibilities were lost on Obama’s campus organizers .

Adding in all the other colleges in Iowa, and students attending school out of state, in and out of the IVRCP system, suggests the great potential for double voting just from “enthusiastic” college students.

In 2008 while observing voting at St Ambrose University and Scott Community College during a satellite voting day at each campus, we saw flyers being handed out and carried by students at each campus prompting them to same day registration and voting that day with the invocation “no ID required.”   Those flyers are shown herein.

The Scott Community College distribution may have been unapproved but the St Ambrose distribution was officially approved.*  Regardless there were organized efforts on each campus to encourage students to register in Iowa that day and to vote with an emphasis on “no ID required.”  Why would “No ID Required” receive such          emphasis?  Is it presumed students do not have driver licenses or school IDs?

“No ID”  wasn’t technically true about the law, in that on campus registration and voting then and there could require another student to vouch for another. That would hardly seem to be a complication in a campus environment where so many are “on the same page.”  It seemed to us that “Joe Student” from out of state was subtly being told to vote on campus and back home as no ID is required in Iowa (nor maybe back in his out of state “second” home). Joe presents himself as “Joe Student” to register and vote that day. If asked for ID, another student can be asked to vouch for “Joe,” that he goes to school their and lives on campus. Indeed for that vote, the procedure may be innocent of fraud and seem like the thing to do,  to get voting out of the way then and there. The second vote (and fraud) comes later, back home, absentee or in person, or ‘by mistake” cuz after all one should be able to vote for those local candidates back home as well.  Any suggestion college students today are more politically sophisticated than that is challenged by other evidence.

More sinisterly, maybe Joe is encouraged by the flyer to make up a name and other information and present himself to vote in Iowa. That would not likely be caught by the IVRCP system unless he happened to pick a real name from a participating state. The poor sap in the other state might get the third degree however. It would take some moxy from the perp but some students may think the greater good requires it. How would it come back to haunt him under current standards of prevention and prosecution?

Some of the inducement is that criminal prosecutions for voter fraud are unlikely. Some of the accused actually claim ignorance and are convincing enough to get away with it. That is a statement in itself about voting in America. We accept that they may also have been mislead by long gone campaign workers.

The numbers of potential offenders presented to a prosecutor in a county that did not have a close race within the win/loss parameter may mean the prosecutor is not likely to make prosecution a high priority. Prosecutors may decide that because the vote or election cannot or is not likely to be taken back after certification (investigations like the IVRCP occur long after certification), and because ballot secrecy  means no candidate can be  “docked,”  they decline to pursue the matter. Both reasons are misfeasance or nonfeasance in our unschooled judgement, but are likely to occur.

This brings us to the importance of prevention

Fear of prosecution needs to be more authentically inhibiting, but catching someone after the fact does not restore electoral integrity. That is why Democrat operatives (who are unquestionably the biggest perpetrators of fraud) vigorously oppose fraud prevention measures claiming “occurrences are rare” and requiring a photo ID is “intimidating.”

They do not have many buyers for their arguments other than some friends in the media that repeat their claptrap. Indeed rank and file Democrats support photo ID.   No judicial precedent exists that photo ID is not a legally acceptable anti-fraud safeguard or that it presents a substantial burden to voting. Now we only wish the Scott County Republican Platform supported Photo ID.

Mandatory presentation of official photo ID that shows current residence at the time of all registrations and voting would go a long way to giving “enthusiastic” students second thoughts particularly in those states with same day voter registration and voting and that are not participants in the IVRC program.**  Of course to be most reliable all states would need to have such laws on the books.

But IVRC research in our judgement has nothing to do with where and how most voting fraud occurs. Purely intrastate opportunities are far more available. And we are not here speaking of the massive types that have occurred over the years particularly in big cities run (and ruined) by Democrats.

There are other scenarios, perhaps even more frequent, where we think current law in Iowa (and other states) is lax enough to allow fraudulent voting with remote likelihood of being caught. Mostly, but not exclusively, they are of the onesey-twosey variety. But they add up. We are not being coy but we are reluctant to promulgate those scenarios. Photo ID, a commitment to timely record keeping and a better civic understanding of absentee voting would largely eliminate them.

Just moved?  . . . go get your local ID updated first before being allowed to register. Want to register?  . . . present yourself to an official registrar with current ID. Mail in registrations up to ten days before an election as currently allowed (no ID required) smacks us as having considerable potential for fraud, so no mail in registrations. Registrations should be only under the auspices of the Auditor’s offices (Registrars in some states).  Eliminate same day registration and return absentee voting to its exceptional origin.  Any hard case exceptions regarding registration timing and voting can be handled with provisional balloting.        R Mall

* St Ambrose culture was so far in the tank for Obama that they permitted the featured appearance and partisan speech of Democrat National Committee Chairman Howard Dean at their auditorium at the same time as satellite voting and the flyer distribution described above was occurring on campus.

** Iowa border states Wisconsin and Minnesota were not participants in IVRCP in 2012 nor were/ are many of the most populace states on the East and West coasts.

0

0