Nearly 20% of Rhode Island Registered Voters Live Out of State

Before you read this, you should remember the following:

1. There is no such thing as voter fraud.
2.  Even if there is, it’s very, very rare.
3. Did I mention there was no such thing as voter fraud?

That may be true. But what’s amazing is that, despite growing evidence that our voter registration system is an open invitation to fraudsters, the left is completely incurious about whether we have a big problem with voter fraud. In fact, they get hysterical if you suggest purging the registration rolls of dead people and people who move out of state — as if the dead could come back to life or people decide they miss their home so much they move back in state just to cast a ballot.

It’s a massive problem. And Rhode Island may be a poster child illustrating it.

The Daily Caller:

The Providence Journal reports that Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea conducted an audit of the state’s voter registry and identified some 150,000 non-Rhode Islanders registered to vote in the state. Gorbea says this group of non-state residents is primarily composed of citizens who have since moved to other jurisdictions or died and does not suggest widespread fraud.

“It’s not really fraud,” Gorbea told the Journal. “It’s really just inaccuracies.”

“There isn’t a silver bullet against bloat on the voter rolls,” she added.

The Journal previously reported that there were 781,770 registered voters in the state in 2016. As such, the group of non-state residents Gorbea’s audit identified account for 19 percent of all registered voters in Rhode Island.

President Donald Trump convened a commission on election integrity in May, led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a hardline immigration restrictionist. Criticscharge the panel is little more than a pretext to enact federal laws which stymie ballot access. Several states, including California and Virginia, have refused requests to cooperate with the commission’s work.

Still, Gorbea concedes an inaccurate voter registry jeopardizes the state’s elections.

“[H]aving clean voter lists [is] critical to preserving the integrity of our elections and ensure that elections are fair, fast and accurate,” she said.

How many elections have we seen in the last decade where the contest was decided by a few dozen or a few hundred votes? Even if illegal voting isn’t a “big” problem, fraud can sway an election. But the left claims there’s no hard evidence of widespread voter fraud– and they could very well be right.

But what else would you expect when you close your eyes, cover your ears, and chant “Lalalalalalalalala” when someone suggests we should look into the situation? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The whole point of voter fraud is (duh) not to get caught. And really, now, how many election registrars and officials are actually looking for it with any energy or diligence?

The bottom line is that we don’t know if the dead are voting in Rhode Island or anywhere else. The slipshod manner in which voter registration rolls are maintained in many states borders on the criminal.

Denying we have a problem just doesn’t cut it anymore. The election commission must come up with recommendations for states to fix the voter rolls so that accurate, current voter registration information is available to prevent illegal voting.