Contributor

John Campbell

John Campbell (R-Irvine) is an Assemblyman representing the 70th District in Orange County. Mr. Campbell is the Vice-Chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee. He is the only CPA in the California State legislature and recently received a national award as Freshman Republican Legislator of the Year. He represents the cities of Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Irvine, Costa Mesa, Tustin, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Woods and Lake Forest. He can be reached through his Assembly website and through the website for his California Senate campaign. [go to Campbell index]

Election Fraud
All too easy...
[John Campbell] 10/25/04

With the national election less than 2 weeks away, there is much focus and conversation on the subject of potential election fraud. And there should be. Certainly the stain of the 2000 Florida election debacle is still on everyone's mind. Partisan Democrats believe the election was "stolen" from Gore because of the famous non-counted "hanging chads." But Republicans were equally incensed that a number of overseas military ballots were never counted because they supposedly arrived "too late."

But 2000 was not the first election where a disputed state determined the outcome. In the Presidential election of 1960, questionable ballots in Cook County, Illinois were arguably enough to give that state, and the Presidency, to John Kennedy. Despite much evidence of votes cast by dead people and other irregularities, Richard Nixon stated that he elected not to pursue the matter legally because of the disruption it would cause to the national leadership in the eyes of other countries during a critical time in the war against communism. There is scant little of that sort of noble action today.

Two years ago, the U.S. Senate race in South Dakota was determined by a few hundred votes, with much questionable voting activity on a few Indian reservations. Another close election is expected there this year between Tom Daschle and John Thune. You can be sure that if it is close, there will be more attorneys than voters in some areas of South Dakota after November 2nd. And the list could go on and on and on. So, what do we do about all this? Since voters are human beings and voting is controlled by other humans, it will never be perfect. You will never eliminate all abuse or the potential for disputes when elections are very close. But we can do a lot more than we are today.

First and foremost, we should have to show a picture ID when voting at the polls, and include a fingerprint or some other identifying mark when voting by mail. Seems pretty obvious that you would want to ensure that the person doing the voting is the same as the person registered to vote. But under California law, you need not present a photo ID, and the poll worker is actually prohibited from asking for any proof that you are who you say you are. How crazy is that? If you walked up to vote in place of a recently deceased person whom the poll worker happened to have known, that worker cannot ask you any questions or prohibit you from casting what he or she would know to be a fraudulent vote.

Those opposed to this idea say that asking for identification would intimidate people from voting. Why? Are these people similarly intimidated from cashing checks or using a credit card? Not if they are legal and the documents they are presenting really belong to them. Heck, you need to show a picture ID to sign up for a video rental card, but not to exercise our most important secular right as citizens? This intimidation thing is just a smoke screen. The opposition really wants to permit voter fraud to "make up for" all of their constituencies who do not vote for one reason or another. As an example, San Francisco will be voting in the upcoming election to allow non-citizens to vote on education-related measures . And remember that there was a proposal supported by some in Sacramento last year to allow non-citizens to vote in any election. So any legal alien, illegal alien and in some cases, foreign tourist could vote in our elections. It is not hard to see the same people who propose this sort of lunacy, turning their backs when those non-citizens commit fraud to vote.

Now there's lots more that should be done to add integrity to the voting process, including better checking and rechecking of who is on the rolls. I know of at least one person who gets 2 ballots every election; one with his middle initial and one without. And we should have a paper trail on the computer voting systems so they too can be verified after the fact.

But until this happens, we may have to resort to the strategy laid out by radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt in the title of his latest book: If It's not Close They can't Cheat. No one has ever pressed a voter charge allegation in a race decided by 20 points. CRO

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