Twisted tree grows from this seed

By John Bertosa

I know I promised to discuss the role of government regulation in our economy this week but recent events have yielded a different subject (and yes a much jucier one) to discuss. Which is why I'm going to talk about balancing the assurance that U.S. citizens can vote with the assurance that there is no criminal activity tainting those results.

Every year, in every major election, there are going to be individual instances of voter intimidation and/or voter fraud. The most creative ones I’ve heard were dead people voting in Chicago in the 1960 election and in 2004 pamphlets were being circulated in black neighborhoods saying to be sure to vote on the second Tuesday of November. (If you don’t understand what’s wrong with that then please go to a different Web site and never return here again).

But, throughout American history there have been times when these problems coalesced into organized, systemic problems. From Southern Democrats using reading tests and other unrelated requirements for decades to prevent blacks from voting to New York Democrats in the mid-1800s encouraging the immigrant population to vote early and vote often (literally). The problems in the South from the end of the Civil War to the late 1960s, put the focus on intimidation and disenfranchisement, and laws and other efforts since then have worked to alleviate that.

But, those efforts have led the pendulum to swing the other way and now, we are seeing another systemic corruption of our voting system. ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has claimed to have registed 1.3 million people this year, including Mickey Mouse in Orlando, Fla. There is no word yet on whether that number includes all 73 times one Cleveland teen has registered. Nevada, Connecticut and Missouri are among the eight states targeted as the FBI has launched investigations into a possible national coordinated scam. And ACORN is not the only one pushing the pendulum the other way. In Cleveland last month, a non-partisan chauffer taking the homeless to register and vote admitted on camera that she was encouraging them to vote for a certain candidate. And, wow, talk about coincidence. As I was typing that last paragraph, I was interrupted by a call saying that a man living in a home for 36 years just received a mailing with his address on it telling where to go vote on Nov. 4. The name on the notice was not his.

It is not surprising about this growth in fraud considering the fertile ground it was planted in. Voting by mail, voting with no ID required, registering and voting the same day all make fraud easier because they strain the verification process or outright circumvent it.

Some might say, what’s the big deal, the elections boards will catch fraudulant registrations and illegal voting. But those people obviously have never lived in Cuyahoga County in Ohio where government ineptitude is on full display every spring and fall. And even if an elections board is on the ball, they don’t have the personnel resources to handle so many questions. In Ohio’s , the Associated Press reports 200,000 of 666,000 newly registered voters have records that don’t match.

And here's proof -- in a June election in a House District in News Mexico, the GOP reviewed just 92 ballots and reported 28 were from fraudulent registration. Now, because of a biased source, let's only look at the 10 registrations that were released to the public. These did not include any Social Security numbers, drivers license numbers or birthdays. And the cherry on top? One of the voters was "Duran-Duran." Nice.

The pendulum has swung from one way of eroding democracy to another damaging way. And America needs to get the pendulum to settle right in the middle. But that won’t happen if people lustily shout out for making it easier to vote while only reluctantly whispering about fraud prevention.