With apologies to Shakespeare, the motto of our electoral system may well have to be changed to “Cry Havoc, and let slip the voting dogs!” According to a report by a New Mexico television station, a man successfully registered his dog to vote, in an attempt to prove how lax the oversight protections against illegal voting had become.
The problem is far from humorous. Our system of registering voters, and the protections against unlawful voting, have become so broken that they threaten the integrity of our entire democratic system of government.
The crisis accelerated sharply during the years that Eric Holder has presided over the federal Justice Department, but it has its roots in the 1993 “Motor Voter” act, known formally as the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. The measure mandated state motor vehicle departments, and other state agencies, to offer to those whom it dealt with, but made it illegal to ask for ID.
The results have been disastrous. The authoritative Pew Center on the States has found “millions of voter registration records nationwide that are either inaccurate or no longer valid…based on data [indicating] a voter died, moved, or had been inactive from 2004 to March 2011.” The study revealed that 2,758,578 individuals were registered to vote in more than one state. In addition, “12.7 million records nationwide…appear to be out of date and no longer reflect the voter’s current information, more than 1.8 million records for people who are no longer living, but have active registrations on voter rolls, and 12 million records with incorrect addresses…once duplicates among categories are eliminated, approximately 24 million registration records, or nearly 13% of the national total, are estimated to be inaccurate or no longer valid.
The publication “Free Speech & Election Law Practices” describes that 10% of 3,000 registrants studied in California’s 39th Assembly District were found to be either noncitizens or at phony addresses.
A report from the Center for Representative Government noted that Motor Voter “has made it difficult if not impossible to maintain clean registration rolls.” John Fund, testifying before a US Senate committee, revealed that in the 2000 election, there were more registered voters in Philadelphia than actual citizens; in 2007, it was found that there were more registered voters than adult citizens. Numerous commentators and analysts have described investigations, indictments or convictions for false registrations throughout the USA.
Rather than assist the states in their attempts to restore integrity to the electoral process, Eric Holder’s Justice Department has actively worked to counter any corrective measures. A number of jurisdictions have attempted to require IDs when voting; Holder has sued them for their honest attempts. Their actions virtually prohibit of any reasonable safeguards against false registration.
Indeed, the Justice Department has looked the other way when blatant electoral violations have been brought before it. It refused to prosecute a clear case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party in the last presidential election. Another salient example: despite explicit evidence that ID requirements have actually increased African American attendance at the polls, the Justice Department has branded this common sense measure as “racist.”
Rather than side with various attorneys general from states which have attempted to clean up voter rolls, The Department of Justice has worked hand-in-glove with Project Vote, an organization that has been charged with electoral corruption and fraud, accorded to documents obtained by the Judicial Watch organization.
This crisis hits at the heart of our freedom, and it is one that every American should be deeply concerned about.
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