Monday the NY Times published a lengthy feature on vote fraud, headlined "FRAUD: Absentee Votes Worry Officials as Nov. 2 Nears." Some quotes:
As both major political parties intensify their efforts to promote absentee balloting as a way to lock up votes in the presidential race, election officials say they are struggling to cope with coercive tactics and fraudulent vote-gathering involving absentee ballots that have undermined local races across the country. * * *Today the Chicago Sun Times has this commentary titled "Too much fraud showing up with absentee voting." It begins:The increasing popularity of absentee voting is reshaping how and when the country votes. Since the last presidential election, a growing number of election officials and party operatives have been promoting absentee balloting as a way to make it easier for people to vote and alleviate the crush of Election Day. At least 26 states now let residents cast absentee ballots without needing the traditional excuse of not being able to make it to polling places. That is six more states than allowed the practice in 2000.
As a result, as many as one in four Americans are expected to vote by absentee ballot in the presidential race, a process that begins today, nearly two months before Election Day, as North Carolina becomes the first state to distribute ballots.
But some experts say that concerns about a repeat in problems with voting machines is overshadowing the more pressing issue of absentee ballot fraud. * * *
"Loosening the absentee balloting process, while maybe well intentioned, has some serious consequences for both local races and the general election," says Todd Rokita, secretary of state in Indiana, where fraud investigations are under way in at least five communities.
The more blatant cases of criminal misconduct have prompted some state officials to seek new legal powers in fighting fraud, including making it a crime to lie about not being able to vote in person in those states that require an excuse.
A Matter for the States
The Justice Department says the Constitution mandates that states run elections, and it generally can intervene only on civil rights matters like ensuring that non-English-speakers are not excluded.
In the mayoral race last year in East Chicago, Ind., federal officials declined to act on the pleas of one candidate's supporters, who foresaw trouble in absentee voting. Two weeks before the election, in the Democratic primary, the campaign of the challenger, George Pabey, was tipped to shenanigans, and his supporters asked the United States attorney there to safeguard the balloting. The prosecutor referred the matter to the Justice Department's civil rights division, which did not show up until a year later, to monitor a different election.
Mr. Pabey lost the race. Last month, the state Supreme Court voided the election after a judge found that the "zealotry to promote absentee voting" resulted in residents being coerced into voting with offers of jobs and other assistance.
There are now criminal investigations of the election by local, state and federal authorities, with five people already charged. Some voters who agreed to vote absentee in return for polling-place jobs say they had no idea this was improper.
"That's how I thought it was, you get paid to vote," Larry Ellison of East Chicago, 32, said in a recent interview, adding that he needed the $100 he received for his vote to buy medicine for his seizures.
You'd think Robert Pastrick wouldn't have any anxiety about being re-elected as mayor of East Chicago: He has had a firm lock on that position since 1971. But even a long-seated mayor, it seems, isn't immune to illegally twisting arms to get back into office. Last month, the Indiana Supreme Court said the city's mayoral primary was so tainted by fraudulent absentee ballots that a new election is necessary.Posted by Marcia Oddi at September 15, 2004 07:13 PMThe court said Pastrick's supporters knowingly manipulated voters who were in ill health or financially disadvantaged; they wrongfully assisted voters in the completion of their ballots and delivered the ballots to election officials. Some voters were offered cash or jobs if they cast their vote the ''right'' way -- that is, in Pastrick's favor. Some putative polling booths were located in abandoned buildings and vacant lots. The abuses were stunning and egregious in their transparency: Pastrick's opponent, Democrat George Pabey, was ahead by 278 votes until the absentee ballots were counted. Then he was out on his ear. The Indiana court, bemused by such flagrant illegalities -- what it called the ''zealotry to promote absentee voting'' -- wisely ordered a new election for October.
This kind of criminal behavior isn't resident in Indiana alone. The New York Times recently investigated absentee voting and concluded there was lots of room for vote manipulation when a person doesn't have to show up at a polling booth and can mail or send in his ballot. The newspaper reported that in the last four years prosecutors have filed criminal cases in at least 15 states as a consequence of fraudulent absentee voting. * * *