Kerby Anderson

Colorado officials have found examples of what they call “very serious” voter fraud. What they found is that dead people have been voting in recent elections. One example they cited is of an El Paso County woman who died in 2009 but had ballots cast in her name in 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

Apparently it is not difficult for someone to vote in place of a dead person. The El Paso County officials found 78 deceased people on their voter rolls. They had previously removed 448 people from the registered voter list since 2012.

Voter fraud might not only affect a local or state election. It could also have an impact on a national election. At the moment, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are nearly tied in the state of Colorado.

Robert Knight was on my radio program last week to talk about his recent column about the lies and myths surrounding voting. Critics argue that voter fraud is a myth and that voter ID laws are unnecessary. Yet we have more than 200 counties in America that have more than 100 percent of their age-eligible residents registered to vote. The Pew Center on the States estimated that about 1.8 million deceased people are currently on the voter rolls.

Robert Knight also wonders if we are being well served by having so much absentee voting and early voting. An absentee ballot sent to a dead person can be filled out and mailed without any verification. Early voting necessitates having more poll workers but also means it is less like to have as many volunteer poll watchers.

Sometime early voting seems to be merely a solution in search of a problem. An MIT study of the 2012 election estimated the average wait to be 14 minutes.

The latest news of dead people voting and the increasing number of precincts with deceased people still on the voter rolls are why we should reevaluate how Americans cast their ballots.