Houston Voter Fraud?

Sunday, August 29, 2010 By joe pelati

Houston Voter Fraud?  

It sounds simple and straightforward, but in reality is an antiquated, flawed system. Examination of this process clearly shows that anyone can register, then vote, without ever unambiguously proving eligibility nor showing a valid photo ID. However, a valid photo ID is needed to rent a car, buy a six-pack or take a short hop on an airplane.

The only official oversight is by the tax assessor, who has neither the resources, ability nor inclination to execute a thorough evaluation of the validity of specific voter registrations. What checks are routinely carried out? Is the address checked to make sure it exists, has a residence attached or is not claimed by multiple people? Is the person checked for true identity, eligibility or other registrations? The public needs to know the details now.

A Houston conservative group, the King Street Patriots, took some time to examine the voter rolls and found many clear examples of voter registration fraud. When six different people claim a common address that is a vacant lot as their residence, and all six are registering to vote, there has been fraud. When a single person is registered to vote in multiple precincts, there is also high probability of either fraud, ineffectiveness of the Assessor’s office, or both.

These voter registration inconsistencies can potentially be exploited in an election. There have been precincts with more votes cast than there are voters–when cheaters get sloppy, I suppose.

These recent examples are likely just the tip of the iceberg. If sufficient resources were deployed to clean up the all the voter rolls, the results would certainly be shocking to the voting public.

I grew up in Illinois, a state which is dominated by Chicago, a city that exemplifies the perfect marriage of big city government and Mafia-esque institutions. In Chicago, thousands vote from the grave, and last-minute votes routinely appear as needed. We do not want to allow Houston to become another Chicago.

In the last Minnesota election, Al Franken won a senate seat by a razor-thin margin after a recount in which “misplaced” votes miraculously appeared in car trunks following the initial count. Moreover, it came to light after nearly two years that there were thousands of votes cast illegally by jail inmates and felons. These votes are more than sufficient to swing this election.

What good are investigations after the vote? At that point, the public usually doesn’t have the stomach for the contentious removal of sitting politicians months or years after the election, no matter how grievous proven voting offenses.

Skeptics and defenders of the current system say there is little evidence of voter fraud. In one sense, that is a correct statement: there is little evidence of voter fraud because there really hasn’t been much energy expended to investigate the vote. Why were private citizens able to find massive voter registration problems so easily if the system is policed appropriately? Why don’t our public servants take the time or energy to do what private taxpayers are willing to do on their own?

The integrity of our sacred voting process begins with legitimate voter rolls which have been audited for consistency relative to other public records. A voting charlatan needs old, inaccurate, and bloated voter rolls to more easily cheat the system. It is a fraudulent act to submit a fake voter registration card, and this act must be taken as seriously as other crimes if our system is to survive. Otherwise, corrupt people will continue to scam the system.

Think about the six odd “voters” supposedly living on a vacant lot, taking their voter registration cards, then walking in to their local polling place to cast votes. The Election Judge can’t do anything about it even if he knows. The current system is based on a faceless process and a postcard. There are certainly many other ways to cheat such a weak system. An accurate, updated voter list is the first step to fix the process; just the voter list has been the gateway to many of the problems.

It is time for those of us who genuinely believe in the principle of “one citizen-one vote” to pay attention to suspicious events, to voting irregularities, and to start to bring on the needed change.

What can we do about it? What changes are needed? Here is a short list to get you started. I know are many more good ideas as well:

1.  Get involved. Give whatever time you can spare to check the voter rolls using the example of the King Street Patriots. Find or create such a group and start working on it.

2.  Find groups committed to showing vote cheats that their time evading justice is over. Find one and join in. Become a part of the process. Apathy is the scoundrel’s best friend.

3.  Work as a poll watcher or worker to monitor the process.

4.  Call and write your State Representative, State Senator, Lt. Governor and Governor. Demand action now.

5.  Spread the word. Let all your friends and neighbors know about the scope and seriousness of the problem. Most people are unaware of voting process and the fraud that threatens its legitimacy.

6.  Demand that the controlling governmental agencies and elected officials make voter registration as important as the collection of taxes. Don’t fall for the claims that it is harmless when voter rolls are packed with inaccurate voter information. We want databases that can be easily cross-checked and validated.

7.  Alert your candidates and elected officials that this is one of your primary demands. Unless we force the politicians to change this broken voting process, nothing will happen. Those elected officials who get in the way of fixing the voting process should be voted out of office for this reason alone. Recall last legislative session that the Voter ID bill shut everything down as the Democrats essentially filibustered the process with parliamentary tricks.

8.  We want Voter ID, the requirement to show a valid picture ID to vote. Accept nothing less. Why don’t we leave a thumb-print when we sign in to vote until the problem is fixed? There is no way to prove that someone voted under an inappropriate name currently. We want absentee voting procedures tightened up.