Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Stop for moment and think. Do dishonest persons exist? People drive with revoked licenses, cheat on income tax, embezzle, jump bail, cheat on their spouses, duck all manner of responsibilities, take kickbacks and bribes, con folks out of life savings, stick up trains, cheat on exams, and misrepresent themselves on job applications. Why then would all human beings suddenly become honest when it comes to elections and engineering their outcomes? Winning an election affects how governments spend money and who has power and control. That is certainly motive enough for some people to become involved in voter fraud.
I’ve been an active member of both major political parties Democratic and Republican over the years both here in Rowan County and up North in Yankee land. Voter fraud is a fact of life and affects both major parties in every state in the United States and it also occurs in other countries often with abandon. Voter fraud has occurred throughout U.S. History. From stuffing ballot boxes to dead people recording votes to busing persons in vegetative states from nursing homes and hospices to the polls and filling in the ovals for them in the voting booth.
State IDs are imperfect guardians of honest voting. Before the N.C. Senate and House rewrote the Voter ID bill last week, it would not have passed legal tests. Also the first version of state ID would’ve done little to stop many forms of common voter fraud. Let’s go over some of the more popular forms of voter fraud:
• Out of state university, college, and technical school students attempt to vote twice–both in early voting in their university, college, and technical school state and when they go home. Nobody checks other state election data bases.
• In the day of computers and outstanding printing, its easy enough to create a credible birth certificate and other required evidences needed to obtain a state ID.
• Fraudulent election judging. Simply look the other way when they see voter fraud occurring. Fail to chase out persons electioneering in polling areas.
• Busing in persons from nursing homes and hospices in vegetative states who lack the cognitive ability to know what they are doing and filling in the ovals for them in the polling booth.
• Election board judges taking note of military absentee ballots and disallowing them to be tallied because those votes tend to go a certain way.
• Rigged voter machines which may not count votes for a party in certain precincts.
• Voting with a deceased person’s ID.
• Felons obtaining voter credentials.
• Voter intimidation is an old favorite. Threaten people away from the polls.
• Turning elderly persons away by telling them they are unqualified to vote by citing some non existent statute.
