Tammany Hall, the New York Democratic political organization that played a major role in the politics of nineteenth century New York City and State, is best known for its scandals, corruption, embezzlement, fraud, and rigged elections. They managed to stay in power in large part due to high voter turnout. Some of those voters, however, were already deceased.
“Vote early, vote often” was a Tammany maxim, and any name on the rolls was considered fair game; wether they could breathe or not.
“Nothing new under the sun,” as they say, as states around the country continue to experience major problems with our voter registration processes. Problems that, unfortunately, have been masked for years under the guise of not wanting to “suppress” voters.
A 2012 report by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan American think tank based in Washington, DC, found that more than 1.8 million dead people were registered to vote and 2.75 million people were registered in more than one state.
And lest you think our land of ten-thousand lakes is squeaky clean when it comes to voter integrity, one need only look at recent court cases brought on behalf of the voting public by the Minnesota Voters Alliance (MVA), a self-styled strike force of “election integrity watchdogs.” The group prevailed in an April 2019 ruling from the Minnesota Court of Appeals. The appeals panel upheld MVA’s lower court victory in a lawsuit seeking access to voluminous records on voters kept by the Secretary of State’s office.
On April 15, 2019 a panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 that election records in the Statewide Voter Registration System (SVRS) are public data and must be released by Secretary of State Steve Simon.
Andrew Cilek, executive director of MVA, asserted in the April 23, 2019, issue of the StarTribune, ’“The large body of evidence indicating potential ineligible voting in Minnesota is underreported, under analyzed, underplayed and underappreciated.”
“Simon, however, as four judges have now told him,” continues Cilek, “is acting contrary to the law by withholding that same information on millions of voters whose status is ‘inactive’ and by not identifying the voter statuses of each voter, including ‘challenged’ for those who have failed an eligibility test. As a result, the public cannot, for example, even check if the number of voters in the election database agrees with the official count of voters in any election.”
In the 2019 Winter issue of Thinking Minnesota, magazine for the Center of The American Experiment, Cilek clarifies, “During the course of the MVA lawsuit, the Office of the Secretary of State was presented with official government records indicating that ineligible felons have voted and that the addresses of thousands of voters could not be verified after they registered on Election Day. During legislative hearings, the secretary has been made aware of the thousands of individuals who register to vote using the last four digits of Social Security numbers yet fail to be found when checked by the Social Security Administration.
“During 2018, as many as 15,000 individuals who registered to vote using the last four digits of a Social Security Number (SSN4) were not found in the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) database. The Secretary did not tell the Office of the Legislative Auditor about the existence of SSN4 non-matches. MVA director Cilek stated, “We only know about it because the data from the SSA are available online.
“When Representative Duane Quam, a member of the Minnesota House Government Operations and Elections Policy Committee, asked the Secretary of State as well as several county auditors for specific information about these non-matches, the uniform response was to say the officials would not be cooperating with his oversight requests.”
Commentary editor and an opinion columnist for the Star Tribune, D.J. Tice, writing in the April 21, 2019 issue, points out, “Simon and his lawyers believe the statutory language confers discretion on the secretary of state to release or withhold certain voter data as he deems appropriate. But the court described that argument as ‘nonsensical’ [ridiculous]. Under the law, in the court’s view, government data are either private (by legislative decree) or public, with no discretionary space in between.
“The data at the heart of the dispute,” concludes Tice, “involve voters who register at the polls on Election Day. Later on, officials run checks on their eligibility–place of residence, criminal record, citizenship, etc. When discrepancies arise–say, the Post Office returns an address verification as undeliverable–the voter’s registration goes into ‘challenged’ status and an effort to resolve the issue ensues.”
In close or disputed elections, and there are many, a small amount of fraud could make the margin of difference. The U.S. Supreme Court has concurred with this assessment, noting that known instances of fraud “demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.”
Every American must be able to trust the process and the result, or the democratic system itself breaks down.
“Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote… that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.” –Samuel Adams
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works, as well as other topics. At times the column is editorial in nature.
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