Stopping Voter Fraud Without So-Called Racist Voter ID Laws

Oct. 2, 2012: Voters cast their ballots at a Franklin County polling location on the first day of in-person absentee voting in Columbus, Ohio. Photo: REUTERS)

The integrity of American elections has been compromised. With each and every new election cycle comes blatant instances of voter fraud, which threaten self-governance because it threatens the very social compact that lays at the heart of public trust and confidence in governance.

A widely read PPD investigation into voter fraud in the Buckeye State back in 2012, put President Obama’s tiny 2-point margin in doubt, or rather explained it beyond a doubt. Bombshell data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) was similarly used by The Washington Post to demonstrate that non-U.S. citizens easily explain President Obama’s tiny 2008 margin in North Carolina and Missouri, now-Sen. Al Franken’s (ObamaCare’s final vote) that same year, and many others.

In this era, there are actual voters, there are voters who still manage to vote from six feet under, and there are imported voters. Then, there are also the voters that apparently love to vote so much, they do so multiple times in one contest.

Long gone are the days when actual voters vote in and decide elections, alone. Sure, American political history is riddled with stories of Tammany Hall, the Chicago machine, and other inner-city fraud operations. However, never have we had such widespread fraud, nor the technological ability to put an end to what many still outrageously claim does not even exist.

The dominant proposal to restore integrity to elections is the voter ID requirement, or voter ID laws. Unfortunately, proposing voters meet the same requirement for getting into a football, basketball, or baseball game labels you a racist. Thus, I have another proposed solution, one that uses human incentive rather than honesty to ensure voter fraud is all but eliminated.

Since every election is a contest — or, in essence, it shares with American sports the very same competitive drive to a zero-sum outcome — then, we should treat it as such. When rules are broken in sports, then there are penalties. So, I submit the following proposal should be drafted into federal legislation by the newly elected Republican majority in Congress, which holds:

In instances of systematic voter fraud that overwhelmingly benefits the candidate of one party or another, then for every fraudulent vote that is found, the party’s individual candidate shall be penalized 1,000 votes. Further, as each individual’s flag or penalty so harms their team, instances of systemic voter fraud shall penalize the party that sought to benefit by defrauding American voters.

As a result, in accordance with guidelines to be set forth by each individual state legislature, which much be approved by the state’s chief executive, the party’s presidential nominee shall also be penalized the number of Electoral Votes decided upon should that party’s nominee win the state during the following president contest. Though the remaining Electoral Votes must be appropriated to the opposite party’s nominee, how those appropriations are made will, too, be decided upon by the state legislatures.

In other words, let’s incentivize political parties to police their own GOTV machines by conducting in-house oversight. Every contest has rules and, when those rules are broken, there are penalties. In North Carolina, officials found at least 145 illegal aliens registered to vote, and only in the country due to President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order. The state’s secretary of state office told PPD two days before Election Day that at least hundreds of other non-U.S. citizens were on the rolls, but likely upwards of 10,500.

However, they did not have the time to deal with it before the election. PPD’s election projection model actually showed Thom Tillis with a 51 percent chance of success, but tipped the scales for now-defeated Sen. Kay Hagan because of voter fraud. Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler released a study in 2011, which found that nearly 5,000 illegal aliens cast votes in the closely contested and decided U.S. Senate election in 2010.

Nevertheless, each instance is a gross example of systemic voter fraud that benefitted one party disproportionately, thus the objection that holds assessing which party benefits from voter fraud will be difficult, is a false objection. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about “cracking and packing” congressional district, “I can’t define porn, but I know it when I see it.”

If you like the rough draft of my idea, then you’ll be happy to know we are now putting a petition behind it, and would love to have your support. But, for now, you can also show your support by sharing it on social media with your friends.