Continuing attacks on the American voting system that is run by individual states do nothing but cast a cloud over what has been a relatively smooth operation since this country’s founding. I have been involved in election reporting for the last 56 years, and I know Louisiana has one of the best and most secure systems of any state.
Do some Americans vote illegally? You can bank on it. However, to insist that three to five million illegal votes were cast in last November’s presidential election is an unproved stretch of one’s imagination.
Democrats have consistently egged President Donald Trump on by talking about Hillary Clinton, their nominee, getting nearly three million more popular votes than Trump. The president won the electoral vote fair and square, but he doesn’t like to lose anything, so he’s constantly fighting back.
Vice President Mike Pence added fuel to the controversy when he talked about the issue at a private meeting with congressional Republicans. He said Trump will pursue a wide-ranging probe of voting rolls in the United States to determine whether millions of people voted illegally last year.
“Just because so many Americans share the concern that you (Republicans) have, I have, the president certainly has about people being registered in multiple states,” Pence said. “You can anticipate that we will be looking for ways to work with you, to simply dig into it, to follow the facts, to see where the facts go…”
Trump in a TV interview said, “You have people that are registered who are dead, who are illegals, who are in two states. You have people registered in two states. They’re registered in New York and New Jersey. They vote twice. There are millions of votes, in my opinion.”
Some facts that Pence talked about have already surfaced. The Washington Post reported last week that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is registered to vote in New Jersey and New York. The newspaper said it has identified four Trump family members or top administration appointees who were registered in two states during last fall’s election.
Actually, it’s not illegal to be registered in two states, but it doesn’t mean people are voting in both places. John Lindback, executive director of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a nonprofit that works with states to improve the accuracy of their voting rolls, explained why.
“It’s not fraud,” Lindback said. “When people move from one state to another or move down the street, they don’t think to change their voter registration.”
Trump’s son-in-law is a good example of that. The Post said Kushner registered to vote in New Jersey in 1999 and cast ballots there through the November 2009 state general election. Kushner registered to vote in New York later that month and began casting ballots in New York in 2010.
Tiffany Trump, the president’s daughter, is registered in both New York and Pennsylvania, where she was attending college until last May. Stephen Bannon, chief White House strategist, was registered until last week in New York and Florida, despite his efforts to remove himself from the Florida rolls.
Lindback asked the question that many Americans are asking.
“I just don’t get it. I have been in elections a lot of years and it’s usually the loser of an election who claims fraud,” Lindback said. “I’ve never seen a winner claim fraud. What’s going on?”
Louisiana is one of 20 states that belong to the ERIC, the organization Lindback directs. It is a multistate partnership that uses a sophisticated and secure data-matching system to improve the accuracy and efficiency of state voter registration systems. A highly mobile population makes it difficult to maintain accurate voter lists, a problem the ERIC is helping fix.
Since July of 2013, ERIC has identified over 1 million cross-state movers and over 3.8 million in-state movers. And cleaner voting rolls have resulted in less returned mail, fewer provisional ballots on election day and shorter lines at polling places.
ERIC only gives information to states that it gets from voter and motor vehicle registrations, U.S. Postal Service addresses and Social Security death records in order to help them keep voter rolls complete and current. States continue to maintain control over their voter lists and records, and the organization is governed and managed by the states that choose to join.
One complaint about voting that might have some validity is the charge that undocumented immigrants who can get driver’s licenses in 12 states could use them to register to vote. The 12 states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Vermont and Washington.
California passed a law in 2015 that automatically registers eligible state voters when they obtain a driver’s license. That doesn’t mean noncitizens can vote, but critics argue there is little effort in some states to check their identify when voters cast ballots. The courts have also ruled against most voter ID laws.
Most analysts don’t think widespread illegal voting has taken place. Trump, Pence and others who think it has happened on a large scale need to back up their allegations with substantial and solid evidence. State-run election systems that have served this country well deserve nothing less.
The 2016 presidential election appears to have worked as well as others over the last 240 years. Trump won, and it is long past time to clear the air and for Trump to drop his questionable charges of fraud.
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