A Democratic non-profit group mailed out 5 million voter registration forms to get traditional voting blocs like single women and minorities to the polls in November.
Being good Democrats, they spared no expense and were quite thorough in their canvassing of potential voters.
The voter registration form arrived in the mail last month with some key information already filled in: Rosie Charlston’s name was complete, as was her Seattle address.
Problem is, Rosie was a black lab who died in 1998.
A group called the Voter Participation Center has touted the distribution of some 5 million registration forms in recent weeks, targeting Democratic-leaning voting blocs such as unmarried women, blacks, Latinos and young adults.
But residents and election administrators around the country also have reported a series of bizarre and questionable mailings addressed to animals, dead people, noncitizens and people already registered to vote.
Brenda Charlston wasn’t the only person to get documents for her pet: A Virginia man said similar documents arrived for his dead dog, Mozart, while a woman in the state got forms for her cat, Scampers.
“On a serious note, I think it’s tampering with our voting system,” Charlston said. “They’re fishing for votes: That’s how I view it.”
Every presidential election cycle brings with it a variety of registration drives targeting people who typically are underrepresented at the polls, and Republicans have long seized on sloppy or questionable registrations as a sign of potential fraud on the part of Democrats.
It’s an issue that is particularly sensitive this year. GOP political leaders have used fears of fraud to successfully push laws across the country that could make voting more difficult by requiring voters to show identification. Democrats have fought the laws, arguing that they can disenfranchise citizens, minorities in particular.
No, this is not some dastardly Democratic plot to plant bogus voter registrations all across the country to be used by party workers to vote more than once. First of all, they don’t need it. If they want to cheat by having someone vote 20 or 30 times on election day, they have local means with which to register fake voters. Then,”voting carousels” drive party workers (or union members) from precinct to precinct where they cast thousands of illegal votes (See Russian presidential election for how this works in practice.) As long as everyone keeps their mouths shut, no one will be any the wiser.
This is why the GOP has a cow every time a story like this surfaces (ACORN was very adept at this.) For every “Donald Duck” or “Dick Tracy” that is registered, there is a dead person or someone who has moved who is on the active voter rolls and whose identity can be used on election day. It is this kind of fraud that is impossible to stop unless the voter presents an ID proving who he or she is.
To believe it doesn’t happen — on both sides — is delusional. Voter fraud has been an American tradition since our founding and to think it suddenly disappeared with the modern era is not logical.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member