Texas Watchdog documents local cases of apparent voter fraud
Texas Watchdog, the local watchdog/transparency group that broke a dead-voter story in 2008, follows up today with a report on two cases of apparent voter fraud.
The names of dead voters may have been used to cast unlawful ballots in two recent elections, a Texas Watchdog investigation has found.
The votes found by Texas Watchdog — two discovered so far by digging through reams of paper and electronic records — appear to be isolated events that don’t point to a pattern or trend of fraudulent activity.
But our reporting, which followed the trail from the polling place all the way to the Harris County district attorney’s office in charge of public integrity, shows how easy it would be to commit voter fraud - and how tough it can be to prosecute people who commit the crime.
Click on over to the Texas Watchdog report for the rest of the report, along with quotes from relevant sources.
The Texas Watchdog reporting comes as the state legislature is gearing up for what is likely to be a highly charged -- and highly partisan -- debate over stronger voter identification legislation. The Republican majority has already muscled through a rules change in hopes of moving the legislation this time around. And some members of the Democratic minority have already started winding up constituents with not so subtle accusations against those who favor the legislation (indeed, Sen. Rodney Ellis robocalled my home last night with an invitation for me to join his telephone town hall to discuss the Republican effort at "voter suppression" -- a charged term that seems popular with some on the Left).
We're not all that interested in the party politics behind the Voter ID debate. As we've stated before, the two major political parties have plenty of resources to get their message out and, if they like, call their opponents names without our help. We are interested in the integrity of the voting process, however, and that our vote, rightly cast according to the established rules, is not devalued by fraudulent votes. We are also interested in anyone who is eligible to vote being able to do so in a relatively easy (but verifiable) manner. To the extent these two aims conflict, we would think reasonable people could come to a workable compromise. Or at least reasonable political leaders might be able to.
The Texas Watchdog reporting suggests that fraudulent voting isn't just a theoretical problem (at least in our area), and that the existing criminal law framework doesn't offer much in the way of deterrence. It's certainly not very hard to vote fraudulently under existing rules (which sets the stage for potential abuse in the future, especially as government becomes ever bigger and, therefore, how an election swings helps determine who gets more of big government's goodies). Moving forward, it's probably worth keeping those facts in mind as some partisans scream "voter suppression" (or worse) at anyone who dares to suggest that perhaps toughening our voter ID requirements isn't an outrageous idea.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/09/09 01:59 PM | Print |
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