How Incompetence And Malfeasance Infect The Voting Process

Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department, a recent book by J. Christian Adams, provides shocking evidence of DOJ racial bias toward minorities and the failure to apply federal law in a race-neutral fashion. A five-year DOJ Voting Rights Section veteran, Adams cites his firsthand experience with officials who sought to promote a radical racialist agenda and who knowingly violated the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA). Adams sounds an alarm, arguing that the values and actions pursued by the DOJ jeopardize our constitutional republic and endanger America's core principles of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Violations of the voting process depicted in Adams' book are manifold and include incompetence, fraud, partisanship, and intimidation or thuggery. These rampant and pervasive problems warrant serious interventions to curb abuses of a right Americans hold sacrosanct. Fortunately, citizens' groups are becoming more involved in elections and have recognized the need to do more to protect the rights of the electorate under the law.

Incompetence

Problems with elections begin with poorly trained poll workers. The quality of training varies from district to district, which can significantly impact election integrity. Myriad government regulations and complicated logistical procedures create confusion among well-meaning poll workers as these people attempt to manage election operations. Incompetence can include poll workers improperly turning away legitimate voters or inadvertently admitting illegitimate voters. In states where voter IDs are not required or permitted, determining who is a legitimate voter can be a daunting if not impossible task.

Other problems include failure to properly administer provisional ballots, which are used when questions arise about a voter's eligibility, and failure to provide adequate instruction to voters requiring assistance. Handling of spoiled ballots is also a source of errors, with remedies left to individual districts, counties, and states.

Further, no methodology exists in Maryland, and perhaps other states, to update voter rolls when residents sell their homes, move, or change residences, according to Cathy Kelleher, president of Election Integrity Maryland, a nonprofit grassroots organization dedicated to cleaning up voting rolls and training volunteers to be poll watchers. Although voters may submit a form, it may or may not be used to make the necessary changes, says Kelleher. She cites examples of multiple families listed as residing and voting at one address. She has found cases in which registered voters' addresses were actually an open field or a parking lot, in which property demolitions were not taken into account, and in which voter lists contained the names of deceased persons who formerly resided at a local nursing home.

Fraud

Voter fraud is widespread and has played a critical role in many close races. Abuses include registering more than once and voting multiple times; forced "assistance" of voters; suppression of the military vote; voting by felons, non-citizens, and the underaged; and voting using names of deceased voters or fictional people -- including cartoon characters and dogs.

In the case of the voter registration group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) -- renamed AHCOA (Affordable Housing Centers of America) -- and its affiliate, Project Vote, federal investigators found misappropriated funds from a federal grant; registration of nearly 12,000 non-citizens in Colorado alone; a report from Philadelphia officials of over 8,000 improper voter registrations; and several thousand fraudulent registrations in Indiana, with names and addresses pulled from telephone books and forged signatures.

Although FBI investigative reports delineate serious allegations of corruption and voter registration fraud by ACORN, the Obama administration in 2009 shut down a criminal investigation of the group without filing criminal charges.

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