OPINION: Mail-in ballot fraud worse than admitted

Accessing truth is getting increasingly difficult. The political world has divided into two camps. Almost no outlet is interested in the middle anymore. Leftist publications give leftist propaganda and use leftist fact-checkers to authenticate it. The same exists for rightist publications.

Take voter fraud in mail-in balloting, for example, virtually all Democrats see no crime, or possibility of crime in it, and advocate national mail-in voting for 2020. Virtually all Republicans see voter fraud as an outcome and a way to rig elections for the left. I greatly fear the next close national election as Antifa and Black Lives Matter organizations have demonstrated that they are fully ready to vote by violence.

In the 2016 presidential election debates, Hillary Clinton asked Donald Trump if he would accept the outcome of the election. It turns out that she was the candidate that did not accept the election outcome -- she still doesn't. The George Soros funded, "Not My President" movement made it apparent that Clinton followers came close to wanting that election settled with violence. Trump's big electoral college victory is the probable reason the nation eventually, although reluctantly, accepted his win.

Since the left in unison insists that there exists little or no significant corruption of mail-in voting, let's ask the right for documentation of such.

Apparently the Heritage Foundation is the only organization on either side that actually documents voter fraud. Four years ago, it found 1,071 instances of it, resulting in 938 criminal convictions and detailed each by state. It identified nine types of fraud: impersonation fraud at the polls, false registrations, duplicate voting, fraudulent use of absentee ballots, buying votes, illegal "assistance" at the polls, ineligible voting, altering the vote count, and ballot petition fraud. About half of these dealt with mail-in voting per se. The study is billed as but a sampling demonstrating "the many different ways in which fraud is committed." It documents "a long and unfortunate history" of the same ("A sampling of election fraud cases from across the country").

Four years later, in 2020, The Heritage Foundation's election fraud database number had to be increased to 1,285 instances. Since the left is arguing that the coronavirus exempts many from in-person voting, the updated Foundation report included how Wisconsin successfully held a primary during the coronavirus scare and "how other countries such as Liberia have conducted an election successfully during a health crisis" (Database Swells to 1,285 Proven Cases of Voter Fraud in America, Kaitlynn Samalis-Aldrich and Hans A. Von Spakovsky, May 10, 2020, The Heritage Foundation).

To the issue that many elections are too close to call, sometimes for weeks, any fraud is too much fraud and intolerable. Fraud in battleground states is especially serious.

Unfortunately, major voter fraud abuses have been identified in Texas, California, Pennsylvania and Michigan. In Texas, the former head of the Texas Democratic Party in Fort Worth allegedly funded a voter fraud ring. Leticia Sanchez and three accomplices "have been indicted for allegedly submitting fraudulent absentee ballot applications and then either intercepting the ballots in mailboxes or improperly "assisting" elderly voters in filling out their ballots." In another case, the attorney general is "investigating mailers sent to non-citizens by the state Democratic Party, asking them to register using applications that already had the box asking about citizenship checked 'Yes.'"

Apparently, in California, the Democrat-led state registered almost 25,000 ineligible voters under the state's new automatic voter registration system. This was brought to the attention of the "Los Angeles Times" when a Canadian complained that he had not been registered properly.

For 20 years, the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles allowed thousands of non-citizens to register to vote. This information was forced into the light by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) after months of successful litigation.

Similar findings were made in Michigan, New Jersey and Illinois by PILF. Michigan had no mechanism "to keep false citizenship claims from being accepted during voter registration." This allowed Detroit to register to vote at least 1,444 non-citizens. This was so in numerous sanctuary cities in other states as well.

Imagine how the left, especially their establishment media, would howl were they to discover that the right was doing this to them.

Voter registration is constitutionally a state function and Democrat-led states have taken advantage of this for years.

"A 2012 report by the Pew Center on the states found that more than 1.8 million dead people were registered to vote and 2.75 million people were registered in more than one state." The Pew report also "found that 24 million registrations were either invalid or inaccurate, making the registration systems vulnerable to fraud" ("Voter Fraud Exists -- Even Though Many in the Media Claim It Doesn't," by John Fund, Oct 29th, 2018).

So voting by mail apparently "makes it easier to commit fraud, intimidate voters, and destroy the protections of the secret ballot," more especially in battleground states. "It puts elections into the hands of the Postal Service. Without the oversight of election and polling officials, ballots can be lost, disqualified, and even stolen" (Database Swells to 1,285 Proven Cases of Voter Fraud in America) Why would we want to put our 230-year-old tried and trusted present system at risk to corruption?

Harold W. Pease, Ph.D., is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for more than 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author.