Widespread Duplicate Voter Registrations Demonstrate the Need for Voter Identification Laws

           Tens of thousands of individuals across several of the States of the American Union are registered to vote in more than one State, according to a series of news reports over the last few months both about individual States and a large group of States collectively. 

            In addition to concerns about ballot integrity, these duplicate registrations distort the voter turnout percentages that liberals often falsely claim are low in order to justify making registrations so easy as to make fraud even easier.  Also, they are costly to States that must mail unnecessary absentee ballots or make other contacts with these voters.

            Only a little over half of the States belong to an interstate consortium to cross-check voter registrations.  See my post, Pennsylvania Joins the Interstate Voter Registration Cross-Check Consortium, from August of 2013, http://williamcinfici.blogspot.com/2013/08/pennsylvania-joins-interstate-voter.html.  North Carolina was the latest to join, which revealed over 35,000 duplicate voter registrations in that State alone!  Several hundred voters registered in North Carolina are suspected of having voted both in that State and other States in recent elections.

California, the most populous State, is the only one that does not even have a statewide voter database to compare registrations from county to county, let alone with other States, according to a recent report from Watchdog.org.   In addition to California, the three next largest States also do not belong to the cross-check consortium: Texas, New York and Florida.  The problem of duplicate registrations is particularly acute in regard to residents of northeastern States that have winter residences in Florida.  Many of them illegally vote in both their home State and the Sunshine State in the same year.  In fact, the double voting by these snowbirds in the 2000 election for presidential Electors contributed to the closeness of that contest, as most of the individuals who voted twice were Democrats.  Also, when combined with the fact that in some States, absentee ballots, which tend to favor Republicans, are not counted if they would not change the outcome of the election, despite the liberal Democratic slogan that year of “Count every vote!” the claim that the Gore-Lieberman slate of electors won a plurality of the vote across the United States is questionable.  This double-counting is only one type of election fraud that added to the Democrats’ totals.  I have posted previously on voter impersonation that took place that year while I was on the ballot for Pennsylvania state representative, for example, in my posts advocating for a voter identification requirement in Commonwealth. 

            These duplicate voter registrations not only allow voters to vote twice, but allow an innocent elector who has moved from one State to another but whose name is not stricken from his original State’s voter registration roll to be impersonated by vote fraudsters.  This vulnerability to voter fraud by impersonation because of duplicate registrations from State to State is another justification for voter ID requirements.  I renew the call for a voter ID requirement, now that a state appellate court has struck down Pennsylvania’s law.  The voter ID laws of other states have withstood United States Supreme Court scrutiny as constitutional.  I call upon the General Assembly of Pennsylvania to pass a law that uses one of those other states’ laws as a model. 

           Meanwhile, conservatives and all those concerned about ballot integrity from other States should urge their state legislatures to join or form voter registration cross-check consortia and, if their State has no voter ID requirement, to pass one.