On Friday, The National Review posted an article about voter registration in America. It seems that there are 3.5 million more people on the election rolls than are eligible to vote.
The article reports:
Some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America’s adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud.
The Election Integrity Project of Judicial Watch — a Washington-based legal-watchdog group — analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011–2015 American Community Survey and last month’s statistics from the federal Election Assistance Commission. The latter included figures provided by 38 states. According to Judicial Watch, eleven states gave the EAC insufficient or questionable information. Pennsylvania’s legitimate numbers place it just below the over-registration threshold.
Cleaning up our voter rolls would not be a major undertaking. All that is needed is to compare Census data, voter rolls, and possibly information from various states’ motor vehicle and license registries.
The article notes that research into Judicial Watch’s information showed 462 counties of the 2,500 studied showed more voters than citizens of voting age.
The article reports:
These 462 counties (18.5 percent of the 2,500 studied) exhibit this ghost-voter problem. These range from 101 percent registration in Delaware’s New Castle County to New Mexico’s Harding County, where there are 62 percent more registered voters than living, breathing adult citizens — or a 162 percent registration rate.
Washington’s Clark County is worrisome, given its 154 percent registration rate. This includes 166,811 ghost voters. Georgia’s Fulton County seems less nettlesome at 108 percent registration, except for the number of Greater Atlantans, 53,172, who compose that figure.
The article concludes:
Under federal law, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act and the 2002 Help America Vote Act require states to maintain accurate voter lists. Nonetheless, some state politicians ignore this law. Others go further: Governor Terry McAuliffe (D., Va.) vetoed a measure last February that would have mandated investigations of elections in which ballots cast outnumbered eligible voters.
Even more suspiciously, when GOP governor Rick Scott tried to obey these laws and update Florida’s records, including deleting 51,308 deceased voters, Obama’s Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit to stop him. Federal prosecutors claimed that Governor Scott’s statewide efforts violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act, although it applies to only five of Florida’s 67 counties. Then–attorney general Eric Holder and his team behaved as if Martin Luther King Jr. and the Freedom Riders fought so valiantly in order to keep cadavers politically active.
Whether Americans consider vote fraud a Republican hoax, a Democratic tactic, or something in between, everyone should agree that it’s past time to exorcise ghost voters from the polls.
Voter identification would clear up some of these problems, but the fact remains that the voter rolls need to be cleared up. Our Representative Republic depends on the honesty of our elections.