Voter fraud? Let's look closer

I duly registered to vote here in Guilford County, and I suppose I could have gotten away with voting in both states in the 1984 elections had I wanted to go to the trouble.

Did 765 people -- and maybe thousands more -- vote in both North Carolina and another state in 2012? It's possible, according to a report delivered by our State Board of Elections to a legislative committee yesterday.

Aha, Republican legislators said. This is proof of widespread voter fraud and justification for a new requirement that voters present an approved photo ID at the polls, beginning in 2016.

Well, maybe. Or maybe not.

Kim Strach, the executive director appointed by the Republican-majority SBOE, urged caution in reporting her findings to legislators.

“We have to ensure that is what happened, and it wasn’t an error on someone’s part,” she said.

Poll workers can make mistakes in recording who voted, checking the wrong person's name on the rolls, she explained. Investigators will examine more closely each of the 765 registered North Carolina voters whose names, dates of birth and last four Social Security number digits match those of registered voters in other states.

There are thousands of other matches of names and dates of birth.

This came to light because last year's voting reform bill wisely included a directive for North Carolina to participate in a 28-state examination of voter rolls. The initiative was overdue.

Of course, it should come as no surprise to find people registered in two or more states. Most people, like me, don't bother to have their names removed from the voter registration list when they move to another state. When they register to vote in their new home, they become registered in both places.

It's too much to expect a state to keep up with this. We might not want our state to have the capability of tracking our movements that closely.

So, normally, a voter's name is purged from the rolls only after many years of voting inactivity.

But what if the person remains an active voter, casting ballots in two states during each election?

It could happen. I would think, if it does happen, it's more likely to happen because someone casts an absentee ballot by mail rather than physically returns to vote at a polling place. But it could happen.

Who would be the most likely offenders? Possibly people with two addresses, such as college students or military personnel. Both are permitted to maintain a permanent, hometown address as well as a temporary residence -- with voting privileges -- in their college or military town. Perhaps they could take advantage of that to vote twice.

Could a photo ID requirement detect this kind of fraud? It's hard to see how if a voter is legally registered.

When I moved from Virginia, for example, I kept my perfectly valid Virginia driver's license for a couple of years until its expiration date. No one asked me to turn it in. Simultaneously, I acquired a North Carolina driver's license. If I had been required to produce a photo ID to vote, I could have done so in both states.

Of course, I would have been taking a huge risk. It's a federal offense to cast a fraudulent ballot. Would it be worth it for me to take that chance? Of course not. It's also dishonest. So, for the worst-case scenario to be true -- thousands of people voting in North Carolina and another state -- there must be thousands of people who are dishonest and willing to risk detection and prosecution for the questionable benefit of casting one extra vote among millions in a particular election (or among thousands if the voter's intent is to unduly influence a local election).

So, I'm certainly skeptical that we have a massive voting fraud problem and even more skeptical that whatever fraud that does exist would be prevented by a photo ID requirement -- let alone by all the other election law changes that were made.

If undue influence of elections is such a concern, maybe a bigger issue is all the big money being injected into campaigns. Raising individual contribution limits, eliminating public funding for judicial campaigns and erasing some donor disclosure requirements all invite greater influence by wealthy special interests, which may be a greater problem than a few double votes. Yet our legislature was keen to invite more money into our election campaigns.

No mistake, voter fraud is a serious offense that should be prosecuted. But there may be more mundane explanations for the information presented yesterday. Let the SBOE dig more deeply before we rush to unwarranted conclusions.