I was recently speaking with someone who claimed that in his area of upstate New York, where many people have vacation homes, there is a lot of voter fraud. He said that people register and vote both where they live and where they have a vacation home. He claimed that the registration offices which are supposed to notify one another when someone files a change of address form routinely fail to do so, allowing people to vote twice within the same state.
I know that studies have shown that in-person voter fraud, someone claiming to be someone else, is vanishingly rare, but I had never before heard this claim of widespread double voting by the same person.
I suspect his source for this info is suspect, but could someone reassure me that the mechanisms for preventing double voting, both intra- and interstate, are robust and keep this from happening on a widespread basis?
In 2000, there were accusations that quite a few people working in Pensacola and living in Alabama registered to vote as Florida voters – enough of them to make the difference in the Bush Gore standoff. They would have been heavily republican voters, and little was said about it in the national coverage of the voting irregularities. They might very well have ben he critical margin of victory for Bush.
About thirty years ago, a friend of mine did this. He voted at his college address…and at his parents’ address.
He was firmly advised by his many friends to turn himself in, as that would make for a better chance at a plea bargain than if they found him out and charged him.
(As he had a clean record, they gave him a plea bargain: $100 and 100 hours community service. Lucky guy, after a really dumb move.)
And…yes, there are mechanisms in place to detect this.
I did what I should have done first – Googled the question – and found this 2004 article on Slate: People Who Vote Twice.
It turns out that this is something of a problem, and that the safeguards in place are not foolproof by any means.
I would have guessed that this problem would be relatively small and bi-partisan, so that one might assume that fraud on one side would be cancelled out by the other, but, “68 percent of the [New York Daily] News’ double-registrants were Democrats.” :eek:
A more recent (2016) article at Florida’s Sun-Sentinel.com has a rep from the League of Women Voters pointing out that some efforts to fix this problem can result in erroneous removal of innocent people from the voting rolls. It says that there are some computerized systems in place to cross check voting lists between states, but not all states participate.
States are working to fix the problem, but the problem is that Republicans have a track record of working to disenfranchise likely Democratic voters, and this gives them another excuse. The Republican secretary of state in Kansas is somewhat hot on the issue, but has only found four people to prosecute.
The good news is that the penalties are fairly stiff for actual violators, which should be a deterrent. Acording to Slate, “The punishment varies from state to state but is usually up to five or 10 years in jail and fine of up to $5,000 or $10,000.”
In short, this isn’t the totally fictional or grossly overblown issue I expected, considering the source I heard it from, but it’s not exactly nothing, either.
Doesn’t mean much unless we know what percentage of the overall electorate in both states were registered as Democrats. If that were also 68%, or close to it, then Republicans and Democrats would demonstrate a similar propensity to double-register.
Plus, I’m going to a hazard a guess and say that it’s not necessarily illegal to be registered in two places, as long as you comply with the registration requirements in each (which presumably relates to having a residence in each place). It may only be illegal actually to vote in both places. Only between 0.8% and 2.2% of the double registrants voted twice, and I don’t think we can assume that the breakdown by party of the double voters is the same as it is for the double registrants.
Would you find it equally surprising that 68% of New Yorkers who also had residence in Florida were Democrats? Because, if anything, I’d be surprised if was so low.
And depending on the laws of the relevant states, it might not even be illegal to vote in both states. States can decide who’s eligible to vote their on any basis they want, so long as they’re not dealing with protected classes.
I suppose if you are voting twice in the same election - i.e. congress, president, governor, state representatives - then it’s fraud. However, what are the rules for example in voting for mayor or county in two different places? Presumably the person is a taxpayer in both locales, so would they be qualified to vote in both? I know some municipalities in Canada allowed (or used to allow?) businessmen who owned a business and paid taxes to vote in their municipal elections, not just residents. I guess it depends on the definition of resident?
Here in Oregon we have vote-by-mail. When the ballets arrive, a number of my neighbors bring theirs by for me to fill out. Then I return the ballets and the neighbors sign off and send it in to the election office. I consider it something of a community service, I keep track of the issues at hand fairly closely so that I know how to vote such that it will cost me the least … and by extension cost all my neighbors the least.
All perfectly legal as far as I know, all I’m doing is filling in the lil’ circles, the voter still has to sign their name which means they approve. There’s no documented coercion involved … honest.
That’s what I mean when I say I’m casting all fifteen of my votes against a sales tax … [giggle] … neat trick eh?
Banana republics that suddenly got the urge to vote had no trouble with this. When you vote, you put your thumb in an inkwell. One thumb, one vote.
Among the things that makes a fair election impossible, is the electoral college. It would take several million voter frauds to defeat that defect. A dozen voters in Florida cancelled out the votes of a million in California or New York.
Aside,I even object to the idea of voters registration or even citizenship. Everyone physically present in the USA on election day is eligible to put their thumb in the ink an vote for president. Candidate with most votes wins. Yes everyone – everyone, of any age, who is subject to US laws and taxes counts. Human beings stay up all night and count the Xes in the boxes, observed and supervised by citizens, like they did in Palm Beach County. Cheap, efficient, exact, fair.
Is that really legal? I would have though it is not. I would have hoped it would be quite illegal.
Asking you r advice, even reading off a sample ballot you have prepared is fine, but if you are actually the one filling out their ballots, that’s gotta violate some laws.
In any case, your anecdote is a pretty compelling reason to get rid of mail-in-ballots.
Right, these are people who bring me their ballet to fill out for them … based on the trust we’ve built up through the years. It’s not like I collect their ballets of of their mailboxes, fill them out, and threaten to shoot their dog if they don’t sign. These are people who otherwise wouldn’t vote at all, so it’s something of a community service.
Not sure I used the word fraud in my post. Does something have to be fraud to be illegal? Is everything that is not fraud legal?
Do they have the right to give the right to their vote to another party?
So, could they let you just go in to the polling place and vote for them on election day? Otherwise they wouldn’t vote at all, right? By your logic, that should be legal.
Does lack of coercion make it legal?
I ask, because I don’t know. I just would have thought that filling out someone else’s ballot would be illegal, even with their consent, even with their encouragement. You may be right, it may be perfectly legal, but if it were, why would you not be able to vote in their place on election day instead?
Also, do you always mark their ballots the way they would vote, or do you mark their ballots the way you would like them to vote?
I have several friends that ask me for help come election time every cycle, and I print out sample ballots, write in the polling place (and directions if they need it), and fill out the sample ballot the way I plan on voting. I also discuss their desires for governance, and sometimes I recommend they vote for someone that I would not have myself, as that person represents their interests and desires better than their opponent.
It is then their responsibility to go vote. If they use my recommendations, great. If they only ask me to be nice, and they secretly vote their own way while telling me they follow my advice, that’s fine. If they only ask me for recommendations so they can vote the opposite, I think that’s a bit rude, but perfectly their right. The ballot is secret for a reason.
State’s are required by Federal law (Help America Vote Act of 2002) to have a central voter registration database. This makes duplicate checking fairly straightforward within a single state. To combat interstate duplicate voting, there are two initiatives: Interstate Crosscheck (http://www.nased.org/NASED_Winter_2013_PP_Presentations/KANSAS.pdf) and ERIC (http://www.ericstates.org/).
Good point that I hadn’t considered. (I posted my last message around 1:30 am.) We also don’t know if the NYDN made any effort to obtain a representative sample, or maybe had some motive for slanting the stats one way or another.
The articles I cited and other sources say that it is not illegal to be registered in two states, but it is illegal to vote in both. Does that apply to any and all voting, or would it be legal to vote for national offices in only one, but vote for state and local offices in both, if you in fact maintain residences in both.? If you’ve moved, of course, this doesn’t apply, but a case could be made that someone who lives in more than one place has a stake in the elections of all of them.
I would guess that the mechanisms that are intended to prevent double voting only note that a ballot was cast, and not that you voted for President in state one but not state two. So presumably someone with multiple residences is expected to choose one and vote only there. Are there requirements that you have to vote in the state which you declare as your primary residence on your taxes?
