Ray Hartwell, Washington Times
Today is Tuesday, Nov. 2. Election Day. According to my desk calendar, it’s also the Day of the Dead in Mexico. South of the border, this is a religious holiday. Tragically, with drug cartels butchering police and civilians alike, our neighbors have too many dead to remember.
North of the border, sadly, our electoral process is a “day of the dead” as well. Here, the dead may vote by the thousands Tuesday, and they are not the only illegal “voters” who will corrupt the election. Indeed, those who genuinely care about integrity at the polls are wishing it were only the dead who raise the issue. In fact, the departed are but the tip of a growing iceberg. Citizens of both parties who favor honesty in elections should be concerned.
A combination of factors contributes to this problem. For example, the National Voter Registration Act, the 1993 statute better known as the “Motor Voter” law, ostensibly was intended to promote registration and participation in federal elections and to assure the integrity of the electoral process by guaranteeing “accurate and clean” voter rolls. It hasn’t worked out that way.
Fraudulent voter registrations have occurred by the millions because of inadequate procedures for confirming a registrant’s citizenship and qualifications. Incredibly, a federal appeals court recently held that an Arizona law requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration should not be enforced. Estimates vary, but it’s reported that about 16 million registered voters should be taken off the rolls for one reason or another.
Certainly, the dead figure significantly in this group. Press reports indicate that there were 181,000 of them on the voter rolls in six swing states in 2004, including 65,000 in Florida. Today, more than 116,000 dead are still registered to vote in Massachusetts, and tens of thousands more in Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Iowa, North Carolina and other states.
