Dispatch Today: We’ve either got a problem with paranormal activities within our polling stations, or we have a problem with living people committing voter fraud, warns Scott Benowitz.
With today’s technologies, removing the names of recently deceased persons from lists of active voters would actually be astoundingly simple to accomplish. It is widely known that there are many thousands of deceased people who continue to vote throughout the U.S. each year. This means that we’ve either got a problem with paranormal activities within our polling stations, or we have a problem with living people committing voter fraud- and this particular form of voter fraud is now potentially notably simple to prevent.
When someone in the U.S. dies, their family members are usually pretty vigilant about closing out their deceased relatives’ bank accounts, charge accounts, utility accounts and their credit cards to prevent any identity thieves from accessing those accounts and conducting fraudulent transactions.
The easiest opportunities for people to commit voter fraud in the U.S.
However, people tend to be less vigilant about notifying the local boards of elections when a relative dies. Many thousands of people who have been deceased for years and even for decades are now still actively registered to vote in every county and in every major city in the U.S. Most political analysts view this as being one of the easiest opportunities for people to commit voter fraud in the U.S.
All anyone needs to do is to read the obituaries sections of any newspaper or to go for a walk in a cemetery to learn the names of people who have died. Then they can purchase a fake ID card, a fake drivers’ license or print fake utility bills which would verify a postal address which would look real unless it is closely scrutinized. Most of the clerks who volunteer to staff the sign- in desks at most polling stations don’t take the time to scrutinize the ID cards or the utility bills which people present when they sign in to vote, and most clerks probably would not be able to recognize a decent quality fake ID card or drivers’ license from a legitimate one. Once someone has acquired a fake ID card, a fake drivers’ license or printed up a fake utility bill, they can proceed to vote multiple times in one day at different polling stations.
Security measures which followed the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 were intended to make it more difficult for people to acquire high quality fake ID’s and fake drivers’ licenses throughout the U.S., though most high school students in the U.S. can still tell you how easy it is to purchase a fake ID card or a fake drivers’ license which would look real enough to be accepted for purchasing beer, wine or liquor at most supermarkets and convenient stores- and the clerks who volunteer to work at polling stations won’t scrutinize ID cards and drivers’ licenses any closer than the cashiers at most supermarkets and convenient stores. This is also potentially impressively easy to prevent.
If coroners offices, morgues, crematoriums and funeral homes were required to send their records of recent death certificates once per month to the relevant boards of elections where recently deceased people had been living at the time of their deaths, then the boards of elections would be able to remove the names of deceased persons from the active lists of registered voters.
I don’t know of any instances in which even the most corrupt candidates or workers within a political party actually actively encourage people to engage in the practice of voting multiple times using the names of deceased persons. With today’s computerized databases, this is one form of voter fraud which can be prevented astoundingly easily.