Rokita Responding to Voter Fraud Allegations
With allegations spreading of ACORN’s apparent attempts at voter fraud around the country and with 105 percent of Indianapolis registered to vote (uh…105 percent? Something ain’t right there) Indiana’s top election official, Secretary of State, Todd Rokita, issued the following statement:
Secretary Rokita Calls for Election Officials to Remain Committed to Ensuring Election Integrity by Utilizing Available Methods of Verifying Voter Registrations
Indianapolis, IN (October 9, 2008) - Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita issued the following statement today regarding the use of Social Security Numbers as an appropriate and viable way to verify voter registration forms in Indiana:
“Giving Indiana voters and taxpayers the chance to participate in the fairest and most accurate election possible is my number one priority as chief election officer. I’m being made aware of instances of voter registration fraud by ACORN and others, from all corners of the state and across the country. I take these very seriously.
(Read more after the leap)
Using all available appropriate technology is our best way to combat voter fraud that we know exists in this state and across the country. This is not the time to start foregoing or circumventing the process we have had in place for years that ensures accuracy in our election. We built a statewide voter registration system well within the perimeters of state and federal law.
In Indiana, the implementation of the Help America Vote Act involves the verification of new and updated voter registrations through a number of methods to ensure voters are who they say they are and that they are eligible to vote. These include verification through the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Health and the Department of Correction.
Simply put, we have a lot of people in Indiana who have wanted to participate in this year’s election and primary. We’ve had over 740,000 new and updated voter registrations already approved, and I welcome each one of these voters, and we have a lot of work to do still to process the remaining registrations so valid, eligible voters can vote.
With Indiana now in play for national politics, voting hackery is afoot. All eyes will be on Indiana and a clean and legal voting process must be assured.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
[...] Voter Fraud in Indiana From Hoosier Access: [...]
October 9th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
To be honest, Indiana’s photo id law does a lot to prevent voting problems even if there are bad registrations. The problem is that it requires that the election officials follow the rules. It also requires effective absentee ballot and early voting processes that may not be as foolproof as they should be (early voting is better than absentee).
But we are in much better shape than some of the other states that are seeing this fraud.
October 9th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Photo ID does nothing to protect against absentee ballot abuse.
October 9th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
I’m willing to bet if someone looked at the statistics, absentee voting is up quite a bit from before Voter ID. Just a guess.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Right, the absentee ballot setup is bad. But most of the early voting (as I understand it) is “Early Voting” which requires the photo ID. I haven’t seen any statistics, though.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Take the responsibility for voter registration away from the counties and give it to the BMV. When you move and change your address on your driver’s license, it should automatically update your voter registration.
The system in use now is a “stone knives and bearskins” system. There’s no excuse for people to have multiple registrations just because they moved and the old registration hasn’t fallen off the roll yet. Modern database techniques and proper procedures would fix this problem (and ACORN’s wagon) in a snap.
October 10th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
According to Indiana law, you can request that your voter registration be canceled, if for any reason you no longer wish to be registered. However, if you have not changed your address since you registered to vote, the only way your voter registration may be canceled is if your county voter registration office is notified that you have (1) been convicted of a crime and imprisoned, or (2) died.
If you have changed your address since you last registered, then your registration at your old address may be canceled if your county voter registration office is notified that you have registered at a new address
Notice the word MAY. It’s not WILL.
If the King brothers, Amos and Silas, live with their parents, John and Mary, and they each marry someone named Mary, there may be three “Mary King” voter registrations for that address. If Amos buys land in upstate New York, it’s unlikely that the election board there will waste manpower and stamps to notify Elkhart County to cancel her old registration. If Silas buys land in southern Indiana, they might notify Elkhart County - but what’s the board of elections to do? They don’t know which “Mary King” has moved.
They ask for driver’s licenses or SSNs on the voter registration form, but they don’t require them; there’s a box to check for “none”.
And if someone registers to vote, they don’t always know where they lived the last time they registered to vote. Maybe they get the address wrong. Maybe they leave the address blank. So those registrations don’t get voided, either.
Modern database techniques and proper procedures would fix this problem (and ACORN’s wagon) in a snap.
Well, maybe. What are you going to use as a unique identifier? The Internal Revenue Service has decided that they can’t demand Social Security numbers for the Amish - and Indiana has the third-largest Amish population in the country.
And I question whether it’s really a problem. Can you identify any Indiana election in the past quarter century where the result was changed due to voter fraud?
In September, the Indiana AG issued a press release indicating that 53 people were charged and 46 people were convicted of voter fraud in 2003. It’s the largest voter fraud case in state history.
But what was the fraud? Mostly, it was people voting in the wrong precincts. In some cases, people weren’t using their correct name to register and vote. Curiously missing from the press release was any mention of people voting twice.
Oh, wow.
There are a lot of people who have multiple houses, not just John McCain. There are other people who are homeless. “What is your legal residence” often is a difficult question to answer. Tax preparers are faced with a slightly tougher question when people move from one state to another; often, it is a process that takes a few months to complete, but for tax purposes, it’s considered to have occurred on one specific date. Colleges face similar problems. Is his legal address where he lives, or where his parents live? Does he pay in-state or out-of-state rates if he has an in-state driver’s license and lives in-state, but he’s a dependent on his out-of-state parent’s tax return.
With 53 people in 2003 (out of Indiana’s population of 6.3 million) being charged with a crime, with not even one single case of anyone voting twice, any assertion that there’s a “problem” doesn’t really pass the giggle test.
October 10th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
And I question whether it’s really a problem. Can you identify any Indiana election in the past quarter century where the result was changed due to voter fraud?
Well, that is a bit hard to do. The issue is that we are not able to accurately measure the scale of voter fraud. It was certainly present in the 2002 Indiana 7th Congressional District race when a reporter from the Wall Street Journal was with the Julia Carson campaign while they perpetrated voter fraud. Was it enough to change the election? No one can ever really know.
How much is an acceptable level of fraud? What is being abundantly demonstrated now is that, at best, ACORN has a process that encourages canvassers to sign up non-existent people to vote. At worst, there is a MASSIVE (to the tune of thousands of attempts) to perpetrate voter fraud.
Your observation about getting voting roles cleaned up is accurate–people do get left in the system at times. But the roles are usually cleaner than that. If the person moves within the state, the voter registration IS alway removed from the original location–at least when done through the BMV. The State now maintains a database that they have been using to clean up the rolls. Marion County also did a mailing a couple of years ago to clean the rolls up. In addition, if you don’t vote in, what, 3 consecutive national elections, you automatically get dropped off the rolls. So the existence of 105% registration is still problematic.
October 10th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Harl, in my personal opinion, one case of vote fraud is too much. But here’s a portion of a press release from the Indiana AG’s office from just a few weeks ago that goes into great detail about the 53 and why it was so bad:
http://www.in.gov/attorneygeneral/press/Release.ECVoteFraud.Summary.html
We’re talking public officials who were involved in forging absentee ballots. This is not unlike what ACORN was doing in Northwest Indiana. And they’re under Federal investigation. So I would say this more than passes your giggle test.
October 10th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Also, check out this case of fraud in which people were voting from abandoned houses in Indianapolis.
http://hoosieraccess.com/files/2007/09/indianapolis-voter-fraud.pdf