Kerby Anderson

The potential for voter fraud this year is significant. As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, more states are proposing a vote-by-mail electoral system. In fact, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former attorney general Eric Holder are pushing for a national vote-by-mail option.

California governor Gavin Newsom has signed an executive order requiring every registered voter (including those listed as “inactive”) be mailed a ballot this November. Yet we know that Los Angeles County has a registration rate of 112 percent of its adult population. Many of those ballots will go to addresses where the voter has moved or is deceased. Is it possible that other people at that address will use those mailed ballots?

Anyone who thinks that voter fraud is a non-issue needs to spend a few minutes looking at the Heritage Foundation database that currently lists over 1,285 proven instances of voter fraud.

The database is by no means comprehensive. It doesn’t even purport to list all the cases of voter fraud, especially when many cases aren’t investigated or prosecuted. You can find examples of false voter registrations, duplicate voting, fraudulent absentee ballots, vote buying, and illegal assistance and intimidation of voters.

If you think that voter fraud won’t impact an election, then perhaps you forgot that George W. Bush won the state of Florida by 537 votes. Donald Trump won Michigan by 10,704 votes. But many state and local elections are even closer. One writer collected data from over 100 elections in Ohio that were decided by less than two votes.

Many of the changes in voting this year (voting by mail, ballot harvesting) make it easier to commit fraud and make it easier to intimidate voters. With all the potential for fraud, we should hope and pray we don’t have another close presidential election like we had in 2000 and 2016.