Failure to Pursue "Voter Fraud" Is Not Plausible Reason for Purging Prosecutors
On March 14, the following headline in the Washington Post, White House Cites Lax Voter-Fraud Investigations in U.S. Attorneys' Firings, struck me as a totally implausible reason for purging the prosecutors: “The GOP allegation, repeated in several swing states where voting margins have been narrow, is that Democrats have illegally ratcheted up their tallies by permitting ballots to be cast by felons, by residents without proper identification, or by people who forged signatures on absentee ballots."
Because I’ve been involved in election integrity issues since 2003, I receive daily alerts related to this issue. On March 6, I received an alert that Claims of “Voter Fraud” Often Manufactured, Exaggerated for Political Purposes, Says New Report from Project Vote from ProtectVote.org.
The alert summarizes the report as follows: “Widespread 'voter fraud' is a myth promulgated to suppress voter participation, according to a new Project Vote report released this week: 'The Politics of Voter Fraud' finds that fraudulent voting, or the intentional corruption of the voting process by voters, is extremely rare. Yet, false or exaggerated claims of fraudulent voting are commonly made in close electoral contests, and later cited by proponents of laws that restrict voting."
Why do I believe the Project Vote report and not the White House? Easy answer: Because I’ve been so involved in election integrity for several years, I have countless folders and hundreds of files full of articles about where the real problem lies regarding voting. It’s not “voter fraud,” it’s “election fraud.”
One place I go for information is Election Data Services. It was hired in 1980 by the Federal Elections Commission to conduct studies of what voting equipment has been used in the U.S. They have conducted studies ever since, with the most recent study available here. As reported, in 2006, of the 170 million registered voters, 69 million had their votes counted on optical scan voting machines and 66 million used electronic equipment.
What the report doesn’t tell us you is that 79% of the votes in this country are counted on secret software. That’s the real problem with the elections, not voter fraud. Both optical scanners and “electronic equipment,” aka “touchscreen voting machines,” are in the hands of private vendors, primarily Diebold and ES&S. Secret software counts 135 million votes, which is 79% of the total of 170 million. Of course, not all 170 million registered voters vote, but the votes cast are counted by optical scans, touchscreens, etc., in roughly the same proportions.
A couple of days ago, I received an e-mail from Paul Lehto, an attorney in Everett, Washington. We are both working with ElectionDefenseAlliance.org, and his message is directed to EDA: "The chance here is to highlight how these nonexistent voter fraud issues emanate from the VISIBLE portion of our elections systems. But there is also a huge INVISIBLE portion of our elections systems that is unmonitored, and is where any reasonable criminal would operate. This is the realm of trade secret electronic vote counting by private vendors, where democracy itself has been outsourced, privatized and transparency eliminated."
Recently, even the mainstream media has been covering stories about the problems with electronic voting machines. Recently, the mainstream media has been reporting on the problems with privatizing vital services, like care of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital.
Privatizing public services, including vote counting, is the problem. "Voter fraud" is not the problem.
