Voter fraud

 A visitor to the Web site submits his views and proposals regarding an important issue - voter fraud.

How to combat voter fraud…by Jon Hall

(written on December 13, 2005)

 Every time a dog, a cat, a dead person, a person in a coma or persistent vegetative state, a felon, a foreigner, or an otherwise ineligible party votes in an American election, or when anyone votes more than once, somewhere an American citizen has been disenfranchised. His vote has been cancelled, nullified, stolen, and his most precious birthright has been stripped of him. And nowhere in the recent report Building Confidence in U.S. Elections from the Commission on Federal Election Reform, headed by ex-President Jimmy Carter, are the root causes of error and fraud in American elections adequately addressed.

 The biggest problem in cleaning up our elections is the issue of voter registries, and Carter’s commission doesn’t begin to deal with it. If voter registries are corrupt, there is no way our democracy can be assured a fair election. Throughout America, people with the flimsiest kinds of ID are put on voter registries, allowing ineligible voters to determine our elected officials and the fate of the nation. That this doesn’t horrify more Americans is, in itself, horrifying, and smacks of some Third World banana republic. For our elections to be right, our voter registries must be right.

 Just in time for this article, I myself have been hit with the problem of a suspect voter registry. For more than a decade, I have resided in the same house in Missouri, and have regularly voted in the same precinct, stationed in the same elementary school. And yet, I have just received a notice from the Jackson County Board of Election Commissioners informing me “it has come to our attention that your affidavit for registration is missing the last four digits of your social security number as required by RSMo 115.155, Missouri Law.” They want me to write those 4 numbers on a card and mail it to them—supporting documentation and a notarized signature are not required. I wondered if I had been voting for more than a decade without being properly registered. So I phoned the Board and talked to a rather personable fellow who informed me that the 4 digits requirement was new, and a response to the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. We had a pleasant and long confab, and I came away feeling that here in Missouri our election officials are more on-top-of-things than in other states. However, the 4 SSN digits, even if used to triangulate with other data—such as name, date-of-birth, or what have you—will not prevent voter fraud.

 Before I outline how voter registries should be created, here’s a little question. If you are a taxpaying, law-abiding American citizen, do you have any doubt that the government knows your whereabouts? If you fail to pay your income tax on time, you can be assured that the IRS will descend upon you; come to your house; perhaps even seize it. And if you run afoul of the law, the FBI, despite its computer problems, will most likely find you, unless you’re a member of the underworld. And you better hope the Social Security Administration knows all about you. That is, if you want them to send you your benefit checks.

 Liberals like Carter have long insisted that voter registration should be easier. But if the government knows all about you, including your address, why do they require you to register to vote? I’ll try to answer that a little later, but first let me broadly outline how voter registries would be created in a rational world.

 The creation of voter registries would begin with the federal government, where computer programs would read through already-existing federal databases to extract data for the creation of a new file, the National Voter Registry. This file would be used for one purpose, and one purpose only: elections. To allay concerns about privacy, it would contain very little information: name, address, zip code, date-of-birth, an eligibility indicator, and a stamp, which I’ll explain later. The key to the file would be the social security number, or SSN. Each and every American citizen would have one and only one record. (Incidentally, this file would be small enough to fit on most any PC hard-drive with ease, all 300 million of us. I wouldn’t be surprised if it would fit on the larger iPods.)

 This new file would be in a constant state of flux. News records would be added to it when new citizens are either born or immigrants naturalized. When folks die their records would be deleted. And since some of the fields in this file could be changed, updates would be happening all the time. The most sensitive of the updateable fields, with regard to elections, would be the address and zip. Changes would need to be made to the programs that update the databases from which we initially create the National Voter Registry so that those programs will also update the National Voter Registry.

 Election law, however, varies from state to state. So the next step would be to create state registries. Federal programmers would create a separate file for each state by drawing off each state’s eligible residents from the National Voter Registry. Because the national registry would be so volatile, always being updated, the state registries would be created and sent to the states only at the last moment, immediately after the cut-off, about a month before an election. When the states receive their registries they could then apply state law to them, which would mainly consist of deleting the records of voters who are ineligible because of state law. After this is done the states would have their registries and the election could proceed.

 There you have it. Was that so difficult? You can see one advantage of this method immediately: Only citizens would be on the National Voter Registry, and each citizen would be on only one state registry. Also, those armies of volunteers at the malls trying to get folks to register, they’d be free to volunteer for some other noble purpose—everyone would already be registered. Creating registries in this way would go far in cutting down on voter fraud—even without instituting any other reforms. But there is another issue that introduces complications that would demand far greater measures: provisional ballots. 

Certain segments of the American electorate are rather nomadic, and some voters relocate to a new precinct just before an election. The simple solution is to discontinue the use of provisional ballots and to require the voter to vote in the precinct in which he’s registered, perhaps by absentee ballot. This makes as much sense as allowing him to vote in a precinct into which he has just moved. Also, if a voter knows he’ll be moving, he could get his new address to the feds before the cut-off, so that he’ll be registered at his new address. The federal government gets people’s addresses a number of ways, e.g. when you file your 1040 Individual Income Tax Return. Perhaps we need additional and more-direct methods to get the feds a citizen’s new address, if for no other reason than so he won’t have to use an absentee ballot to vote in a precinct he no longer lives in.

 American campaigns and elections are enormously expensive, even with volunteers doing much of the work. The manufacture of ballots, precinct rosters, and other materials takes time and costs money. Therefore, I have little sympathy for advocates of the provisional ballot. With my system of registration everyone would still be able to vote. But with all the effort that goes into the elections that make up our democracy, voters could at least be responsible enough to procure an absentee ballot in time or to make sure the feds have their current address before the cut-off, rather than coming around at some chic late hour to moan about disenfranchisement when they themselves were laggards. I’m more concerned about my vote being cancelled by an ineligible voter than I am about an eligible voter not getting to vote because of his own inaction. Provisional ballots do nothing less than throw a monkey wrench into election processing. Provisional ballots create an enormous amount of extra work, much of which is never completed, and which delays certification of an election. Provisional ballots are the hole in the system, and demand additional safeguards and reforms. Also, provisional ballots are one of the principle ways by which voter fraud is committed.

 So, if Congress rejects the simple solution above and insists on continuing with the provisional ballot, then we must upgrade our election systems to incorporate complete computerization. And part of this entails one little reform that might well raise the hackles of some folks. But if we really want our elections to be devoid of error and fraud, we must accept it. The reform is this: All voters, whether voting at their assigned polling place or using provisional ballots, must use their SSN to vote.

 And why must we place this new requirement upon the voter? Because the voter’s SSN must be used to access, or read, his record on the National Voter Registry when he casts his ballot. A successful access, or hit, of a voter’s record on the registry verifies that the voter is an American citizen. But it doesn’t stop there. When a ballot is cast, the voter’s record on the national registry must be updated, or, as I call it, stamped. The stamp would consist of the date and time, and it would indicate that the voter had indeed voted. This safeguard prevents scammers from casting more than one ballot. I’ll explain:

 When voting at his assigned polling place, the voter shows his ID to an official, who looks him up on the that precinct’s roster, and if everything checks out the voter then signs his name on that roster in the place provided for him alone and proceeds to the voting booth. If followed scrupulously, this widely used procedure sets up a roadblock that makes it difficult to cast more than one ballot using one ID. But with provisional ballots all of that is missing; the voter isn’t on the roster. So, using provisional ballots scammers can actually cast more than one ballot. That’s where the stamp comes in. Regular ballots must be counted before provisional ballots. Then, when provisional ballots are counted, each voter’s record on the national registry will be accessed and checked for having been stamped. If we don’t find the voter on the national registry, the person casting the provisional ballot could be assumed to be a non-citizen. If we do get a hit but his record has been stamped, we know we have a scammer who is attempting to vote more than once. In either case the ballot would be rejected because of felony voter fraud and put on a list for prosecution. This safeguard provides a means of fraud detection entirely absent from today’s systems. If it isn’t feasible to nab these scammers right then and there, then cameras should be set up at the polling stations that handle provisional ballots to help catch those who would attempt to subvert our elections.

 The complications I’ve just gone through are brought to you courtesy of the provisional ballot. Unless we adopt such measures there is no way we can prevent nor apprehend the fraud that comes with the provisional ballot. That’s why I’m against them. But, if we’re gonna have them, I feel that voters using provisional ballots should do so only in a centralized polling place, perhaps city hall or the county seat. Regular polling places should only admit voters who are on their rosters, which would expedite voting there. Also, provisional ballots could be used to update the National Voter Registry with the voter’s new address, making the voter good to go for the next election should he still be living in that precinct.

 For years I worked as a programmer/analyst on IBM mainframe computers, and what I have just presented is a systems analysis of a part of the election process, albeit very general and for the laity. Such analysis is appropriate because elections, like so much else in modern life, can rightly be seen as nothing more or less than data processing. Elections should be seen as updates. So, I’m going to get on my high horse here and make a categorical statement: It is only by the use of a unique identifier, such as the SSN, that any update, including an election, can be correct. The closest we can come to certitude about the results of our elections is through the use of the SSN to access the registry when each ballot is cast. It’s not enough to merely require the SSN to register. These basic axioms about data integrity seem to be lost on Carter & Co. Failure to use a unique identifier is why we can have no confidence in our elections.

 How confident would you be that the IRS would give you credit for having paid your taxes if they didn’t require you to identify yourself on your 1040 with your SSN? And think what a mess the banking industry would be if they didn’t use unique account numbers. I won’t belabor this point because it’s so obvious. But, in the exercise of our sacred right to choose our elected officials, as well as decide on propositions, initiatives and such, our government has let us down.

 The very first programs I ever wrote I punched out on a keypunch machine, and the cards that made up these programs I carried around in a cardboard box. (Accursed is he who drops such a box and lets his cards scatter out of order.) But I quickly migrated to using a CRT to write programs, which were kept on a DASD, or disc, not a cardboard box. What became one of my specialties was converting old card systems to more-up-to-date online systems. My users were always delighted to have real-time access to their data. The last time I converted a card system to an online system was in 1990, and even then I considered it to be woefully late in the game. So the TV spectacle of myopic Floridians inspecting cards for chads—whether dimpled, hanging, or otherwise—is, from my data processing perspective, a rather ugly joke. The way we did it back in the old days, if a card was rejected, for any reason, a new card had to be keypunched to replace it. That’s not possible with an election, and wouldn’t be tolerated by the voters. Our elections need to get away from all backward, retrograde technologies, pronto. Using cards is an embarrassment.

 So, I’m all for using modern technology in the actual casting of ballots, meaning computers. Bill Gates is busy giving away his billions of bucks. Either he or some other tech biggie could develop the balloting software—probably before lunch tomorrow—and just give it to the American people. Surely that would earn them some points with the feds for the next time they want to break up another great American company.

 Any concerns about using the latest technology pale in comparison with the error and fraud inherent in using the old. Big city political machines, such as in Chicago, would no longer be able to stuff ballot boxes, because it would be impossible, and subject those who tried it to being caught. There would be no over-votes and no under-votes. We would know the regular ballot count immediately; no protracted fiascos like Florida 2000.

 The infamous Florida “butterfly ballot” snafu could not happen using a properly designed computer system, because at each step of the way—after each selection on the ballot—the system would give the voter feedback, saying, “you voted for Candidate X, if that is correct press Next, if that is incorrect press Go Back”. Just like using an ATM. And at the end of the ballot the voter would get a recap of how he voted on each item and would yet again be given the chance to go back and make changes. Voters should be given a paper receipt of their ballot, which would show exactly how they voted. This receipt, besides giving the voter comfort, could be used in contesting elections.

 One of the vexing problems with card-ballots is the recount. Even if you rerun the very same batch of cards through the same card-reader machine, you are quite likely to get different counts from the first run. This is due not only to the limitations of the machines, but also to the cards themselves. After all, cards are paper, and prone to being damaged by the machines that read them, becoming frayed or otherwise unreadable. Also, cards that are punched and handled by a voter are less reliable than those that are punched on a keypunch machine by a professional. A card that was accepted and whose votes were counted on the first count might be rejected on a recount, effectively disenfranchising a voter.

 As I see it, there are 2 ways a computer can count votes: “on the fly” and after the polls close, and I believe you should do both. “On the fly” counting is the keeping of running totals while the polls are open and citizens are actually voting; when a voter finalizes his ballot the running totals for his choices are incremented by 1. When the polls close, you’d be able to look at these running totals and know immediately who won the regular vote count. But that’s not good enough; you need the ability to “recreate” the election, and that means saving the ballots as records in a file—the ballot-file. (Ballot-files would be rather small, with tiny records.) Counting the votes on the ballot-file would be conducted after the polls closed, and it would consist of a computer reading through the ballot-file and counting the votes as it read. When completed, you would then compare the ballot-file counts with the running totals, and if the programmers had done their jobs correctly, you’d find that the counts agreed. The business of recounts of computer files is a dead issue, because the recounts would always produce the same results. This should be a huge relief to the electorate. The reason we recount card ballots is because of the very unreliability of that technology. I have an additional means to prove, reconcile and verify the counts; read on.

 With today’s antique election systems, one doesn’t really know whether one’s ballot was actually counted or not. It may have been rejected, and for a variety of reasons. And ballots are not tied to individual voters. For instance, there is no ID on a card ballot; those checking for hanging chads can’t know whose card it is, and consequently cannot ask the voter what he intended. If putting an ID, such as the SSN, on the records in the ballot-file would not be allowed because of the demands of ballot secrecy, then I propose that ballot records be stamped with a unique number, such as a sequence number, the exact time, a random number, or a concatenation of such. Not only would this number go on the ballot record, it would be put on a report of all ballots, and this report would be generated “on the fly”, i.e. while voters voted. After the election you could match entries on the report with ballot-file records by means of the unique number. You’d be able to see if any tampering had happened in the interim. This kind of cross-referencing is utterly impossible with current election systems. It provides a whole new level of specificity in verifying the vote. And as an additional safeguard, I’d also print the unique number on the voter’s receipt that I’ve proposed, allowing another form of corroboration. These reforms should take the wind out of the sails of the Diebold conspiracy theorists, and put them out of business.

 I promised to share my theory about why some people are so resistant to change, and why they want to retain the current system, especially of requiring people to register, and it’s pretty dark: The current system allows for the gaming of elections. It allows illegal aliens to vote, and people to vote early and often, and, with the provisional ballot, across precinct lines and state lines. A rational method of creating registries and a full computerization of balloting takes that all away, and those wanting to keep the current system would no longer be able to control the outcomes of elections. (To see just how awful such corruption can be, click on the next link.) 

With all the election fraud that has been perpetrated in the U.S. for lo these many years, there has been very little prosecution of it, even in instances where it is patently obvious to have occurred, such as the 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington state, where provisional ballots seemed to be the culprit. (By the way, when an election is in doubt and is so obviously fraught with fraud as that one, why is it that the candidate who wins 2 out of 3 counts loses to the candidate who wins just one? It wasn’t as though anyone actually knew what the legitimate count was, or which of the 3 counts was the most reliable; and the loser, Rossi, won the count with the widest margin. The judge deciding this election failed to heed the wisdom of the great bard Meatloaf: “2 out of 3 ain’t bad”.) Using a thoroughly tested computer system, there would be no doubt about whether Rossi or Gregoire had received the most votes.

 Seeking to deny the electorate the same precision and rectitude we see elsewhere in the contemporary world, the people against substantive election reform simply want to be able to continue stealing elections. Heck, in California they’re up-front about wanting to let illegal aliens vote. But if non-citizens can vote in our elections, why not allow them to run for office in our elections? I suppose Jimmy Carter wouldn’t mind if his old buddy Fidel ran for U.S. president, as long as it was on the Democrat ticket. However, real Americans might then consider moving to France.

 Despite the many blessings it would bring, there are some things a modern computerized election system won’t do. It won’t prevent activist courts from summarily vacating election law, such as we saw with the 2002 senate race in New Jersey. The solution for that problem is to impeach and remove such judges. Legislators who leave unpunished such gross usurpation of what is their constitutional purview do not deserve re-election.

 Bottom line: The first thing America must do to insure the integrity of its elections is to insure the integrity of its voter registries. I believe I’ve presented a way of doing just that, and it registers everybody. The second thing we must do is to outlaw the use of the fraud-prone provisional ballot until such time as we have a fully integrated, modern computer system for our elections. And the third thing we must do is to find more carpentry work for Jimmy Carter.

Public Program Testing Organization

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Date last modified July 8, 2008