Voter Roll Accuracy, Vote Verification Critical to Ensuring Reliability, Veracity

By Besa Martin, Chair
NFRW Election Integrity Committee

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Democrats are pushing to allow voters to vote by non-traditional means (mail, online, etc.) that raise questions about security.

MONEY FOR STATES
Recent legislation to combat the coronavirus impact originally included $4 billion to states with requirements to send ballots to every voter on the rolls, and to provide same-day voter registration and online voting. President Trump signed the final bill with those requirements taken out and reduced the amount sent to states to $400 million.

In the spirit of the decentralized government that our founders envisioned, the money will be sent to the states without the Democrats’ conditions. But how will this money be spent by the states?

DANGERS
In this time of social distancing and mandated emergency election procedures, there is a huge opportunity for elections to be stolen through unscrupulous agents. As top experts have written, elections will be compromised by fraudulent absentee ballots where voter rolls are full of unverified persons or ineligible voters. The key to cheating in elections is to exploit the system by adding votes that are virtually anonymous.

Consider that only last year, Los Angeles County agreed to correct the voter rolls after a lawsuit revealed there were approximately 1.5 million inactive/ineligible voters. Los Angeles County had not cleaned up the voter rolls in 20 years so the number of voters on the rolls was 112% of the county’s adult population. A journalist in Florida tested this theory eight years ago when she mailed in three registrations and received a voter registration for one of her assumed names, and recently, after checking the Palm Beach County voter rolls, she found that false name still on the rolls.

Inaccurate rolls with fake or ineligible voters is a failure of election administrators in assuring valid election results. Other issues include ballots being stolen from mailboxes and voters being bullied by political operatives, which Hans von Spakovsky and J. Christian Adams recently recounted happening in Texas, Mississippi, and New York. Unfortunately these bullies often live in the same neighborhood with their victims and hold political power; therefore, the victims are reluctant to tell how they are exploited.

The fraud and opportunity of elections being stolen is real. So what is the solution?

PROTECTION AGAINST CORRUPT ELECTIONS
Frontline experts have outlined the following procedures that would make our elections more reliable and accurate. The spending of the $400 million in the states should be for these items:

• Voter Roll Accuracy. The people included on voter rolls should be verified by election administrators. Voters should be eligible under the law.
• Vote Verification. Before sending out a ballot, the election administrators should mail out a vote request form to be signed by the registered voter. Then, after receiving a ballot, the election administrator should have a procedure in place to authenticate the mail-in ballot. This should include a U.S. Postal Service stamp noting the date the ballot is mailed back and a signature of the registered voter.

Let’s protect our right to vote.

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