For every instance of one fraudulent vote, a legitimate American voter is disenfranchised. As the Supreme Court of the United States recognized when it upheld the constitutionality of Indiana’s voter identification law in 2008, “… not only is the risk of voter fraud real but…it could affect the outcome of a close election.”
The right to vote is the most basic of civil rights and should not be stolen or mitigated as a result of fraudulent ballot box activities. Unfortunately, recent reports of voter fraud across the country and an unwillingness by this Administration to seek criminal charges against those threatening the integrity of our voting system is infringing upon this fundamental right. Opponents of measures to improve voting integrity claim that voter fraud is very rare and almost non-existent, but the influx of voter fraud reports across the country prove otherwise.
The FBI is currently investigating allegations of voter registration fraud in Virginia after officials say nearly 20 voter applications were submitted under the names of dead people. Investigators also found that in eight of Virginia’s 133 cities and counties, 1,046 illegal aliens were registered to vote and that since 2005 those aliens had voted over 300 times. Reports in Colorado claim that at least 78 dead people are registered to vote. The former Colorado Secretary of State identified almost 5,000 non-citizens in Colorado who voted in the 2010 election and estimates that over 12,000 non-citizens are currently registered to vote in that state. Just last week, the Public Interest Law Foundation discovered that there are thousands of foreign aliens registered to vote in Pennsylvania and Virginia because of lax voter ID laws and officials are currently investigating possible voter registration fraud in 57 counties in Indiana.
Missouri equally has its own marred track record of ineligible voter rolls, illegal ballots and vote tampering. After the 2000 elections it was discovered that 56,000 St Louis residents held more than one voter registration. In 2006 and 2008 the liberal left group ACORN was found to have submitted thousands of fraudulent voter registrations and false applications in the Kansas City and St Louis areas and in 2012 Missouri was lumped in with a dozen other states found to have a large number of ineligible voters on its rolls.
Instead of looking into these voter fraud cases across the country, the Obama Administration hasn’t filed a single lawsuit over the past eight years. No attempt has been made to demand that areas with reported voter fraud clean up their rolls or take corrective actions. According to a 2012 survey, one out of eight American voter registrations is inaccurate, a duplicate or out-of-date. It is estimated that 1.8 million registered voters are now dead and that approximately 2.8 million people are registered in two or more states. The Obama Administration has continued to ignore reports that estimate that 6.4% of non-citizens voted illegally in the 2008 presidential election and that 2.2% voted in the 2010 midterm Congressional elections.
It is illegal for people who aren’t American citizens to vote, we can start to clean things up by enforcing those laws and by going after those who attack the integrity of our elections by enrolling fraudulent voters and cast illegitimate ballots. It is our fundamental right as Americans to vote and by allowing voter fraud to occur across the country, we are undermining just how important it is to have the right to vote. We need a voting system across the country that people can trust in. The right to a fair election is one of the cornerstones of our republic and we owe it to the millions of Americans who will cast a vote this November to uphold its honor.
