GDCritter

January 4, 2005
Election System Problems

I had heard tales about Chicago. Everything in the city government was controlled by Mayor Richard J. Daley’s political machine. City jobs were controlled by patronage; they were easy to get for those who supported the mayor, and impossible to get for his opponents. A lot of city services tended to work the same way. Most intriguing of all, the mayor’s supporters were able to keep voting in every election — even years after they had moved to the cemetery. Many said those were the voters that made the difference for John F. Kennedy in 1960.

When I moved to Chicago in the late 1960’s, I learned all the tales were true.

If you think about it, it makes sense. To maintain their control, they had to stay in office. To stay in office, they had to keep a large core of people loyal to them. But they couldn’t affort to rely on keeping all the various groups in the city loyal to them. They needed an edge: They had to control the elections.

Mayor Daley’s Chicago wasn’t unique. Boston’s experience with Tammany Hall was in the history books, and other cities have had their own political machines. And when I moved to New Mexico, I learned that where Chicago did a lot under the table, in New Mexico they did it in plain view and nobody seemed to care.

There was an election shortly after I moved to New Mexico (more than thirty years ago). As usual, the results were slow coming in from the northern part of the state, expecially from Rio Arriba County. The broadcast news people got more impatient as the night wore on. Finally, the folks at KOB, an Albuquerque radio station (now 770 KKOB AM), got tired of waiting and decided to take matters into their own hands. Their announcer called the location in Rio Arriba County where the votes were being counted. The announcer asked “How many votes does (candidate) have?” The answer came back quickly, and was broadcast live throughout the state: “How many does he need?”

Rio Arriba County hasn’t been like that in recent years. Bernalillo County (Albuquerque) had big problems several elections in a row (like boxes of ballots found in odd places, and various registration oddities) and it looked like it would take over that role. But this year, as it was in 2000, the biggest problem seemed to be in Doña Ana County (Las Cruces). A questionable late correction there four years ago reinterpreted a 1 into a 6, added 500 votes to the tally, and moved New Mexico from George Bush’s column to Al Gore’s. This year, once again, they kept counting and recounting the ballots, hoping for a change in the result. As one writer here put it, “Our governor assured us that the counting would go on until we turned blue.” A box of ballots discovered in a toilet in Doña Ana County — literally — shrank George Bush’s margin, but even that couldn’t turn the tide for John Kerry this year.

I thought we were really bad in our handling of elections. But that was before all the grief and shenanigans surrounding the race for the governor’s office in Washington. You can read some about it in the newspapers. More can be found at Captain’s Quarters and Silent Running (the comment posted there by krm on January 3, 2005, at 05:08 AM is particularly on target), but the most detail I’ve seen is anywhere you look at Sound Politics.

All of which is background for this: It seems there are problems with every election, and nothing ever gets done to prevent their recurrence. That has to change. Our election system may be fine for most cases, but starts breaking down when a race is close, both because any error has a larger impact and because the temptation to commit election fraud is so much greater when it is clear the outcome can be changed. “If it isn’t close, they can’t steal it” is true, but is simply not good enough. “A "down to the studs" remodel of our elections system is overdue” That remodel must include changes in every aspect of the way elections are conducted. What to include in that remodel, and how, is the subject of the voting issues subject area.
 

January 19, 2005
Election Comments Sent Elsewhere

Back in November, I just couldn’t resist responding to a posting on Jim Miller’s web site. I sent him an e-mail:

In the addendum to your article on provisional ballots last Wednesday, you noted that it looked like there had been a concerted effort to stuff the ballot box in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, and wondered if Soros-funded organizations such as ACORN had been operating in the county.

I can tell you that ACORN was very active in a number of areas in New Mexico. Living nearby, I’m especially aware of how active they were in Bernalillo County. Among other things, news reports indicate they were implicated in the large number of voter registrations (the news stories said 10-20,000) identified as fraudulent when the voter registration cards sent out were returned by the post office because they were for nonexistent addresses. They were apparently also the reason a number of parents were surprised to find voter registration cards arriving in the mail for their 12- and 13-year-old children. I don’t know if the voter registration forms found in a couple of crack houses were collected by people they employed. I also don’t know how many of these “people” voted.

Incidentally, though state law requires all final vote tabulations to be certified to the Secretary of State by the Friday ten days after the election (i.e., last Friday) at least two counties have not done so and are still counting votes. One of those is Doña Ana county where a questionable late correction four years ago reinterpreted a 1 into a 6, added 500 votes to the tally, and moved New Mexico from Bush’s column to Gore’s. (To its credit, Bernalillo County turned their numbers in on time on Friday.)

I hope this information is useful to you, and not too duplicative.

He was kind enough (after he checked for himself) to include my information in an updated article on the subject.

In an e-mail to friends later that month, I said:

Election update: They kept counting and counting. As one writer here put it, “Our governor assured us that the counting would go on until we turned blue.” (!) But it did have to come to an end. The last two counties gave their vote counts to the Secretary of State on Tuesday, November 16 — four days after they were legally required to do so. Bernalillo County (Albuquerque) got theirs turned in on time. Doña Ana County (Las Cruces) didn’t — and their votes included a bunch of votes from a box “discovered” in a bathroom. (!) No, that was not a joke. Even so, the official results released last Tuesday showed that New Mexico remained red by about 6,000 votes. For all his political prowess, governor Bill Richardson couldn’t deliver.

Why does the title of one of this year’s new books (If It's Not Close, They Can't Steal It) keep coming to mind?

I’ve also been following the last governor’s race in the country to be decided, the exceptionally close governor’s race in Washington state. They, too, finally got an official count — according to at least one article, by just 261 votes out of 2.8 million cast. That meant an automatic recount before they could really be sure who their next governor woule be. Now there will probably be demands for another recount since the figures released last Wednesday showed the Republican won by 42 votes. (!!)

At least, we don’t seem to have quite the problems they have in Ukraine.

Or do we?
 

January 25, 2005
Additional Election Comments

The subject for today’s soapbox is voting irregularities and our voting system. In my view, this is a subject rapidly approaching critical mass — it remains to be seen whether that powers some substantial changes or blows up in our collective faces.

These election problems are not limited to Washington state. There wasn't really much of a problem in Ohio, but Florida had big problems in 2000, as did New Mexico (see my prior post on this subject). We're also now starting to hear about problems in Wisconsin (see Michelle Malkin, My Two Common Cents, and The American Mind, for example — and Captain's Quarters is providing more coverage), and I'm sure there were really problems in other areas as well. We heard about Tammany Hall (Boston) in our history classes. And, of course, there are always voting problems in Chicago — under Mayor Daley and since. Given all this, it seems clear to me the basic problems probably exist — at least potentially — in every jurisdiction in the country.

Still, this year's election for governor in Washington state stands out (see, for example, Citizen Smash, Timothy Goddard, Power Line, Captain's Quarters, Silent Running — the comment posted there by krm on January 3, 2005, at 05:08 AM is particularly on target, and the Seattle Times). But the most detail I’ve seen is pretty much anywhere you look at Sound Politics. You can read a little (but very little) about this race in the newspapers, too.

I’d thought we were really bad in our handling of elections here in New Mexico, but that was before this. They’ve got all the vote fraud methods I’d heard of before, and several new ones. It’s especially cute how many “voters” “live” in the King County (Seattle) elections office. And how — again — just like in Florida in 2000 — getting felons to vote while screwing the military voters is high on the bad guys’ list of things to do. Lots of vote fraud going on up there!

With all that, I hadn’t been aware (till my friend mentioned it) that several of the other counties are suing the state on equal protection grounds — the state having changed the rules during the latest vote count after most counties had reported but in time to let Seattle and associated counties add illegal/improper votes to the count and put the Democrat over the top — but I've definitely felt they should do so. The assessment of a friend up there — “Ugly, it is.” — is right on target, as is his further assessment that “WA state voters cannot have confidence in any of the close votes this year, even including whether the state went for Bush or Kerry!” (That change would produce an interesting increase in the country's redness!) Sounds to me like the only way to have a result anyone can have any confidence in is to have a revote.

All of which provides further substantiation to what I wrote before:

It seems there are problems with every election, and nothing ever gets done to prevent their recurrence. That has to change. Our election system may be fine for most cases, but starts breaking down when a race is close, both because any error has a larger impact and because the temptation to commit election fraud is so much greater when it is clear the outcome can be changed. “If it isn’t close, they can’t steal it” is true, but is simply not good enough. “A "down to the studs" remodel of our elections system is overdue.” That remodel must include changes in every aspect of the way elections are conducted. What to include in that remodel, and how, is the subject of the voting issues subject area.

Yes, it must include changes in every aspect. Of all those things, though, the number one item (“number one with a bullet”) must be a serious ID requirement. The situation in this state at present is that poll workers are not only not required to request ID of voters, they are not allowed to. That has to change. Making sure each voter is who he/she says would have the largest impact on vote fraud of any single thing we can do.
 

February 16, 2005
U.S. Election Echoes

A friend of mine from the D.C. area said of President Bush “I think he lost FL the first time, and OH the second.” In reply, I told him

I think you’ve been on the east coast too long. I also think there’s a much higher probability that Bush won Wisconsin and Washington state than that Kerry won Ohio [see earlier post]. And as for Florida in 2000 — even Gore partisans who wanted to prove Gore really won couldn’t find enough Gore votes in Florida (even after blocking military votes) to pretend he won that state — they ALL found that Bush won Florida under essentially ALL possible ballot interpretations. (You might also be interested in folks’ findings on how one can create a “dimpled chad”.)

Nevertheless, whichever one of us is right, there are going to be more/increasing problems if we don't fix the vote casting and counting processes. That has to be a high priority. And I'm ashamed to say my own political party (Democratic) is the one that is standing in the way of verifiably honest elections.

 

February 22, 2005
Vote Reform #1

Various voting reform meetings are taking place now. One was last week in Pasco, Washington. Sound Politics reported on this meeting. One comment from that report seems to me to be nearly perfect in encapsulating how a lot of us are feeling.

I told them that this was not about WHO won, but rather HOW the winner came to be and that most people were like me in that up until now we believed that our elections were being run accurate and honest. When all the shenanigans started with this election some of us got curious and started looking into things and we found that our elections have not been fair, honest or accurate.

That comment is right on target. Many of us have believed our elections were being reasonably well run. Even most of those who had become aware of voting problems tended to think they were being run “well enough” overall. But with the closeness of some recent elections, and the scale of the voting irregularities in a number of jurisdictions, these problems can no longer be ignored. That’s why, in a previous posting, I said that

It seems there are problems with every election, and nothing ever gets done to prevent their recurrence. That has to change. Our election system may be fine for most cases, but starts breaking down when a race is close, both because any error has a larger impact and because the temptation to commit election fraud is so much greater when it is clear the outcome can be changed. “If it isn’t close, they can’t steal it” is true, but is simply not good enough. “A "down to the studs" remodel of our elections system is overdue.” That remodel must include changes in every aspect of the way elections are conducted.

I subsequently identified the most important single thing that must be done as follows:

Of all those things, though, the number one item (“number one with a bullet”) must be a serious ID requirement. The situation in this state at present is that poll workers are not only not required to request ID of voters, they are not allowed to. That has to change. Making sure each voter is who he/she says would have the largest impact on vote fraud of any single thing we can do.

Why is this the most important? It’s because we have defined by law, in each state and locality, just what an eligible voter is. We have followed this up with mechanisms for voter registration to enable eligible voters to exercise their franchise, and to enable us to be sure that those voting are eligible to do so. And yet, every election there are voters who arrive at their polling place and discover their spouses voted earlier in the day — even though those spouses have been dead (and therefore no longer eligible to vote) for months or years. Obviously, others have voted in place of these individuals’ dead spouses. Pretending to be someone else, and casting their vote, is the simplest kind of vote fraud. And this is something every state has defined as a serious criminal act.

That is why the most important thing we can do to reduce vote fraud is to require each and every voter to show an official government-issued picture ID. The intent and the necessary function are to require the voter to verify who he/she is (whether he/she is an eligible voter), not where he lives (where he/she should cast that vote).

We could go even further with this ID requirement, using some current technology to make it possible for the authorities to demonstrate their performance — to their supervisory chain and/or to the public. Each ID can be scanned or photographed, allowing for subsequent voter verification and quite possibly preventing the sort of flagrantly improper actions (by election officials, no less!) reported in about the second and third paragraphs of the same Sound Politics item I referenced above. Just having such a system in place might go a long way toward rebuilding the voter confidence so badly damaged by this past year’s shenanigans.

Since the focus is on who the voter is, the watered-down “ID requirements” in the current “voting reform” proposals in New Mexico, Washington, and other states, simply will not suffice. Utility bills and the like can indicate where someone purports to live, but cannot demonstrate who that person is. And eligibility to vote is — and must be — based on who one is.

Those who oppose significant ID requirements claim these requirements will work against the selected groups they want to pander to. This argument is ridiculous. IDs are now required to rent videotapes or DVDs, to cash checks, and to buy liquor and cigarettes, as well as for a multitude of other purposes. To pretend a legitimate ID requirement for voting is discriminatory or is a hardship in today’s environment is disingenuous at best. I would maintain, as a result, that opposing a legitimate ID requirement is the same thing as actively promoting vote fraud.

Having said that, circumstances may require some (limited) degree of flexibility — always keeping the purpose of the ID requirement in mind. When I was in college, for example, I grew a beard and came to look rather different from my driver’s license. Appropriate verification of identity was (had to be) obtained by a combination of my driver’s license (clean-shaven) and my university ID (bearded) — both of which showed my signature. Similar identity verifications should be accomodated in the voting reform statutes.

A second part of this most important voting reform is to insure that any given voter votes only once. We simply can no longer afford to have groups of people running about from precinct to precinct casting multiple votes, and must insure this does not happen. Voters in Afghanistan and Iraq dip their fingers into indelible ink to insure against multiple voting. Why don’t we?

And who is opposing even these most simple reforms? You know the answer to that, don’t you. Does that answer frustrate you as much as it does me?
 

June 9, 2005
A Frustrating Result

Up in Washington State, Judge Bridges has issued his ruling on the suit over the botched election last fall. He ruled against the plaintiffs, refusing to order a new election, because the plaintiffs did not prove how many of the illegal votes went to Gregoire. This despite their proofs that election officials, especially in Seattle, violated a multiplicity of laws and regulations. (They did not, however, prove which election officials violated which laws.) In effect, the judge ruled that the plaintiffs had to demonstrate what the result of the election would have been with the illegal votes removed.

Is that really what the law says? Who knows? Lord knows it’s hard enough to get a ruling in line with the statutes, even when there is agreement on what the relevant statute is.

But, again, is that really what the law says? If it is, in the words of a quotable quote, “then the Law is a Ass!” and we have all been defrauded about the laws’ purported intents and effects.

It seems to me that the whole purpose of the election laws is — or should be — to insure that elections are properly run, so the citizenry can be sure the will of the majority has been determined and appropriately followed. This purpose is violated — flagrantly — when ineligible people are allowed to register and vote, when people are allowed to vote multiple times, when election officials fail to count legitimate votes and invent votes that never existed, and when election officials “pencil whip” the voting results and certify the uncertifiable. All these things go far beyond simple mistakes. And all have been demonstrated to have occurred in the election in Washington State — especially in King County (Seattle).

The plaintiffs in the current case demonstrated in court that at least 1,678 illegal (fraudulent) votes were counted. They demonstrated in court that election officials (to put the best possible face on it) completely abdicated their responsibilities under the election laws, and completely failed to do the reconciliation the law requires. Under these circumstances, with the “final” vote margin less than 1/13 of the number of proven fraudulent votes, it is quite literally impossible to determine what the majority position in that 2004 election was. Under such conditions, it seems to me the only reasonable solution is to conduct a new election under conditions making it more possible to determine the actual will of the electorate.

But if Judge Bridges is right, and the current law sets an impossible standard that must be met, “then the Law is a Ass!” and must be changed. I would propose that the standard to be written into the law should be that an election must be nullified, and a new election held, if there is a showing that more illegal/fraudulent votes were cast than the margin of “victory” in the contested election. (There should also be mandatory action taken against election officials in jurisdictions where it is shown that the law’s requirements were ignored. In Washington, as — I believe — in many other states, such malfeasance/nonfeasance is a felony.) Without these actions, it is impossible to determine (much less follow) the will of the majority.

Besides being very frustrating, this decision demonstrates conclusively that the current election laws are broken (and are being broken). And that means that, if this country is to hold itself out as — or to be — a republic, election reforms are a necessity. Until then, “It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes.”

For good coverage of last year’s Washington State gubernatorial election farce, go to Sound Politics and scroll around. Good places to start are the posts on the ruling last Monday by Stefan Sharkansky and Jim Miller.

UPDATE: Stephan Sharkansky has noted that “that election officials have an affirmative duty to protect the electorate from illegal voter registrations” — with a series of citations of the Washington state statutes demonstrating this duty. That same posting shows rather conclusively that the Seattle elections office apparently made “a conscious policy decision to treat election laws as optional guidelines and disregard them when they think they can get away with accepting illegal registrations and votes.” It is supported on the Sound Politics site by example after example of multiple and fraudulent voter registrations and votes in the 2004 election there. (Just scroll around on the site!) It seems to me these elements should have an impact on the “burden” promulgated by Judge Bridges.
 

October 23, 2005
Voter ID Progress

In a previous posting, I identified a serious voter ID requirement as the most important necessary voting reform, saying

Of all those things, though, the number one item (“number one with a bullet”) must be a serious ID requirement. The situation in this state at present is that poll workers are not only not required to request ID of voters, they are not allowed to. That has to change. Making sure each voter is who he/she says would have the largest impact on vote fraud of any single thing we can do.

Georgia and Washington, among others, agreed on the necessity of an ID requirement, and took steps toward its implementation. More recently, the Commission on Federal Election Reform has recommended a standard photo identification as a firm requirement for voting. In making this recommendation, the Commission sees the federal Real ID Act as a key element in the implementation of the National Voter Registration Act’s requirements.

New Mexico, too, began this year to take some steps toward reform. The legislature passed, and the governor signed, an election reform bill. (Here are links to both the governor’s press release from April 6 and the Albuquerque Journal news article of April 7 — Albuquerque Journal articles require registration/subscription.)

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Many here don’t think much of this year’s “reform” bill. One such is state Republican Party chairman Allen Weh, whose letter to the editor on the subject published in the Albuquerque Journal and widely e-mailed; the e-mail is reproduced here. The Democrats responded in a guest column (reproduced here) saying, basically, that everything the GOP chairman said was wrong. Thanks to the web, I read the bill itself to see who was being more accurate. Read and come to your own conclusions — I’ve come to mine.

The public seems to strongly approve of a voter ID requirement. The American Survey at the beginning of October (reported here) found that 83 percent — including 77 percent of Democrats — favored a voter ID requirement. In Albuquerque on October 4, a referendum to establish a voter ID requirement in that city passed with 73 percent of the vote.

So who opposes voter ID? On the national level, it’s been Tom Daschle and the Democrats’ leadership, as well as the liberal interest groups. On the state level in New Mexico, it was the Democrats in the legislature, especially in the Senate. In Albuquerque, it was Democrats in the city council who declined to pass a voter ID ordinance — but did, under pressure, put the referendum on the ballot, where it was strongly opposed by the party machinery of the Democrats. Beyond that, there are other elites in opposition, including the federal judge in Georgia who blocked enforcement of that state’s new voter ID law.

In summary: A voter ID requirement is badly needed, and is supported by large majorities of the population. It is opposed by the leadership (but not the rank and file) of the Democratic Party. I wonder why that is.

UPDATE: True to form, the ACLU has filed suit against the city to block even this baby step toward a real voter identification requirement. The ACLU’s New Mexico executive director said “The bottom line is that this law creates new and unnecessary hurdles for people, for Americans, to exercise their right to vote. And unfortunately those burdens fall disproportionately on people who are poor or homeless.” He didn’t bother to mention that the ordinance also provides for the clerk’s office to provide free picture ID’s for those who don’t have them.
 

October 20, 2006 Pre-Election Problems Here we go again! The Albuquerque Journal reported today that some 1,300 voters there, in Bernalillo County, New Mexico — that we know of, so far — have each received two absentee ballots. The news story said a mailing on October 13th was repeated on October 16th. The report continued, saying that the cause of the glitch is unknown, but the clerk’s staff is “double-checking and triple-checking. Everything’s back on line.” And that may not be all. There was a constant stream of calls today to Pat Frisch’s morning show on KKOB AM from people who had sent in one absentee ballot request and each received at least two absentee ballots. Among these were at least three calls from women whose husbands had received at least two absentee ballots, and who had not themselves received any absentee ballot, even though they and their husbands had simultaneous submitted individual absentee ballot requests. Absentee ballots are handled by the office of the Bernalillo County Clerk. That office is currently held by Mary Herrera, who is now the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State in this year’s election. This is the same county clerk that, in 2004, accepted at least 10-20,000 fraudulent voter registrations, most produced by Soros-funded organizations such as ACORN for (possibly nonexistent) people at nonexistent addresses and for “voters” who were actually 12- and 13-year-old children or family pets. (This year, ACORN is embroiled in a voter fraud scandal in St Louis, currently being covered by Gateway Pundit.) I hope I’m wrong, but this looks like the beginning of a very problematic election.

October 29, 2006 Voter List Lawsuit, and 200,000 Voter Cards Undeliverable The Republican Party of New Mexico filed a request in July under the state open records statute for the names of foreign nationals who have been issued drivers licenses in the state. Their intent was to compare that list with voter lists, to try to determine how many of these roughly 30,000 ineligible individuals might actually have become registered voters. A large number of such registrations are thought to be likely since individuals are routinely offered a voter registration opportunity when getting a drivers license. They finally got a response from the state — 150 pages of information with everything (or everything except ZIP codes, in another account) blacked out. That obviously made any verification attempt impossible. As a result, the GOP filed a lawsuit in state district court on Friday to force the release of the names. This news was broken on the KKOB AM morning show on Friday, and was reported in the Albuquerque Journal on Saturday. The accounts in the two places differed in some specifics. In particular, GOP secretary-elect Nina Martinez said on the Friday radio show that the party was told that “executive privilege” was the reason state officials would not release the list, though she said there was no citation of the reason (from a short available list) for the redactions as is required by the open records statute. By the time the newspaper story came out, federal privacy laws had become the stated reason for the refusal. The interview and the article identified another problem with the voter lists, as well: When the Secretary of State sent voter ID cards to all 1.1 million registered voters this year (plastic cards, but without pictures), more than 201,700 (over 18%) were returned by the post office as undeliverable. That probably means these voter registrations had nonexistent addresses (suggesting they may be fraudulent registrations) since mail to legitimate addresses is normally delivered regardless of the addressee’s name. Of this situation, GOP secretary-elect Martinez said, “This does not make rational sense, that one in five cards would be returned as undeliverable by the Post Office. This is a major problem.” And yet neither the state nor the counties have taken any action, and the Secretary of State has said those people “retain their rights and can still vote”. The number of voter ID cards returned as undeliverable also does not include the registrations of children and pets as voters, and the continued voting by dead people, that have turned up in the past. All this suggests that probably well over one in every five people listed as voters in New Mexico — more than 20% of all voters — is not actually a legitimate voter, in a state whose color is routinely decided by very thin margins. And yet, Governor Bill Richardson and the state Democratic Party can’t seem to understand why trust in our elections processes is plummeting, or why more and more people are demanding a real ID requirement at the polls.

November 3, 2006 Vote Count Early Shenanigans The situation in New Mexico is getting stranger. It came out on Thursday in the Albuquerque Journal and on Albuquerque radio station KKOB that the Secretary of State’s office had rejected both bidders (the state’s #2 and #6 accounting firms) for the independent canvass auditor contract — for which the state legislature had appropriated $200,000 — and would perform the general election canvass itself with its partisan (Democrat, of course) staff. The story came out because of the accusation by New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici that Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron was “playing politics” with the November 7th vote. The Secretary of State’s office said neither of the two bidders “met the agency’s expectations”, and it was now “too late” to go out for new bids. The office of Governor Bill Richardson responded to Senator Domenici on Thursday on behalf of the Secretary of State: “The governor feels that Senator Domenici is out of touch with New Mexico voting procedures, and he should concentrate on representing New Mexico in Washington. ... Senator Domenici and Republican lawyers should stop exploiting the election process and scaring voters.” This news apparently created a small firestorm when it was featured on the radio (on KKOB and, presumably, other stations) on Thursday. As a result, it was announced on the radio news later in the day on Thursday and reported in Friday’s Albuquerque Journal that an accountant (Robert Rivera, described on the radio as an “independent auditor”) had been selected to review the performance of the canvass function by the Secretary of State’s staff. There was no indication of how this contract had been generated, in apparent violation of the state’s competitive procurement processes. “Rivera said he signed a contract Wednesday afternoon shortly after a phone call from Vigil-Giron's office,” the newspaper reported, leading Republican attorney Pat Rogers to comment “They were not going to retain him until after that press conference (on Wednesday).” As Drudge would say, “Developing ....”

November 18, 2006 Vote Count (Finally!) Completed New Mexico law requires the official vote canvas to be completed, and the official vote counts turned in to the Secretary of State by all the state’s county clerks, by ten days after the election. That time period expired yesterday. Bernalillo County Clerk Mary Herrera (just elected as New Mexico Secretary of State) didn't make it, but requested and obtained a court order allowing her to comply with Friday’s requirements on Monday. I know it’s legitimate, but that sounds to me a lot like “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” But that’s not quite as bad as it sounds. Mary Herrera did turn in final unofficial vote totals, even though they haven’t been officially blessed by the county canvassing board. Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron released those numbers to the press. As a result, one of the country’s last six undecided Congressional races — New Mexico’s First Congressional District (the Albuquerque area) — has been decided. Republican incumbent Heather Wilson will be returning to Washington, having beaten New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid by 879 votes out of almost 211,000 votes cast. Heather Wilson claimed victory in the race a week ago when the outcome became clear; Patricia Madrid has not yet conceded, and indicates no decision has yet been made as to whether a formal recount will be requested.

February 15, 2007 Judge Overturns Voter ID Law The voters of Albuquerque were given an opportunity in 2005 to vote on a proposed law requiring voters to show proper identification at their polling places when they go there to vote. The voters approved the law, with 73% of the voters voting in favor of it. They did so, in part, because of the tens of thousands of fraudulent registrations appearing before the 2004 election in the names of children, pets, etc. And that was before 2006 when more than 200,000 voter cards (for 18% of all voters) were returned to the county clerk’s office by the post office as undeliverable, indicating that they were for voters who had moved or died, or resulted from fraudulent registrations. The ACLU, of course, filed suit to block the new law. Now, 16 months later, a federal judge has struck down this law. An ACLU representative announced the ruling Tuesday afternoon. As reported in Wednesday’s Albuquerque Journal, “U.S. District Judge M. Christina Armijo ruled the disparate treatment of absentee and in-person voters violated the equal-protection clause of the Constitution.” In other words, the judge ruled that the city is not allowed to try to fix any element of the vote fraud problem unless it is fixing the entire problem. Others had noted that the failure to deal with absentee ballot problems was the weakest element of the new law, and that this gap had to be filled. The city of Albuquerque was willing to put up with this gap — temporarily — because it still left the city with a law that was far better than its state equivalent. This ruling is inappropriate, and will make it a lot harder to have elections with even a pretense of propriety. As I have noted before, those who oppose a serious voter identification requirement are actively promoting vote fraud.

March 26, 2007 Navarrette on Iglesias In a column printed in today’s Albuquerque Journal and headlined “Voter Fraud a Foolish Reason To Go After Iglesias” (available on-line from SignOnSanDiego and the San Diego Union-Tribune where it is headlined “A fear of Latino voters”), Ruben Navarrette shows he knows at least several things that simply are not so. Two are central to his column, and are particularly egregious. On a third, he may only be guilty of taking a self-serving statement as gospel without bothering to check it out. A fourth shows one of the hidden assumptions apparently behind Navarrette’s thinking. A key point of the column, highlighted in the Albuquerque Journal, is where Navarrette says To think that illegal immigrants would hand over their savings to smugglers, trek across the desert, settle into an underground economy, and then suddenly get the urge to risk it all by rushing out to vote. Navarrette asks “Are there people who really believe this?” But, actually, it’s not so hard. One has only to remember the political operatives and their flyers at last year’s marches supporting illegal aliens and illegal immigration — all working for the Democrats — seeking to sign people up as voters without regard to whether they were legally entitled to become voters, whether they were citizens, or whether they were here illegally. Illegal aliens are least likely to know about U.S. voting laws, and most likely to believe the political operatives when they tell the aliens they are allowed to register and vote. It can also be argued that later, when they do understand, being a registered voter makes it easier to pass as a citizen. Another key point is stated early in the column, where Navarrette says Whenever you hear the phrase “voter fraud,” substitute “surging Hispanic political power.” A couple of paragraphs further, he supports this point, saying In New Mexico, and anywhere in the Southwest, when someone sayd they’re worried about voter fraud (“surging Hispanic political power”), you know they’re talking bout the possibility of illegal immigrants going to the polls. And since in these parts, most illegal immigrants happen to be Hispanic, the issue comes with built-in and not-so-subtle ethnic overtones. That’s right — Navarrette says everyone (at least in the Southwest) who expresses concern over vote fraud is an anti-Hispanic bigot. In this, and in the point above, Navarette is trying to make the case that David Iglesias, formerly U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, was fired for reasons that are (a) different from any of those stated, and (b) probably racist. But Navarrette’s racist charge involves a substantial leap of faith on his part, and is unsupported by evidence. Besides, Navarrette quotes Iglesias asserting that, even if some voter fraud does occur, there wouldn’t be enough voter fraud to skew an election. This appears to be a Navarrette article of faith. Let’s approach this question from outside the Southwest — from Washington State — where former U.S. Attorney John McKay was fired along with David Iglesias. And for similar reasons: A key factor in McKay’s firing was apparently his unwillingness to take action on vote fraud cases. McKay asserted he is aware of “no evidence of election crimes.” Either this statement is false, or John McKay leads a very sheltered existence. Stefan Sharkansky, among others, have documented large numbers of fraudulent, and fraudulently counted, ballots in the 2004 election. The demonstrated number of such ballots is several times the margin in the 2004 election for governor of Washington State in that election. Sharkansky has provided copies of his findings and evidence to the authorities, as well as to the public. Under these circumstances, McKay’s assertion of “no evidence of election crimes” looks to be willful ignorance, at best. The McKay case demonstrates at least two things: (1) Voter fraud exists at a sufficient scale to change the results of at least close elections. (2) John McKay was apparently fired, at least in part, because of his refusal to pursue voter fraud cases in circumstances where anti-Hispanic bigotry was clearly not a factor. Now let’s come back to New Mexico. There has been a large amount of voter fraud here. ACORN has been active here, as elsewhere. In central New Mexico, ACORN has apparently been responsible for at least 10,000-20,000 fraudulent voter registrations in Bernalillo County, the state’s most populous, alone. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When voter cards were mailed to all state voters last year, more than 200,000 — representing over 18% of all registered voters in the state — were returned to the Secretary of State as undeliverable. These are huge numbers, especially when compared to the very slim margin by which Congresswoman Heather Wilson defeated New Mexico Attorney General Patsy Madrid for one of the state’s three Congressional seats. That suggests massive voter fraud. And, in at least one case, the U.S. Attorney’s office had a confession from a responsible individual. But, even there, David Iglesias declined to pursue the case. How many other voter fraud cases he ignored is not known. Under such circumstances, firing Iglesias (in part) for not pursuing any voter fraud cases seems entirely appropriate. And here’s where Navarrette has apparently accepted Iglesias’ claims uncritically. Navarrette says Iglesias set up a bipartisan task force and hot line to investigate allegations of voting improprieties. But few of the tips had any merit. Given the above, this statement (attributed to Iglesias) is at least slanted and misleading, and probably is just false. Either way, Iglesias declined to take any action on voter fraud cases. And the fact that the Administration had that as an issue in Washington State, where anti-Hispanic bigotry couldn’t be a factor, at least suggests that bigotry wasn’t the reason this issue came up in the Iglesias case. One other piece in the column exposes the hidden assumptions in Navarrette’s thinking. Navarrette writes “I asked Iglesias if he thought this issue was really about the GOP trying to suppress the Hispanic vote.” The problem with this question is that the GOP is actively trying to compete for Hispanic votes. But they are having problems because of the false, but oft repeated, charges that they want to disenfranchise Hispanics. In one glaring example, the Democratic Party in New Mexico (under state party leader, now Lieutenant Governor, Diane Denish) ran ads — on the Spanish language stations only, which they denied on the English language stations — saying the Republicans would act to disenfranchise all Hispanics if they were elected. These fraudulent ads may have been effective in maintaining the Democrats’ political dominance in this state. Ruben Navarrette should retract this column, and apologize for it. I’m not holding my breath.