There is no question that America is the most successful
experiment in democracy that the world has ever known. Under our
Constitution, we have the ability to pick our political leaders and
our legislative representatives at all levels of government, in the
federal government and in state, county, and local governments.
While we are a great republic, we also have an unfortunate and
long history of ballot fraud. Examples abound, from an election in
New York in 1844 in which 135 percent of the eligible voters turned
out to Lyndon Johnson's infamous Ballot Box 13 in his 1948 Senate
election. More recently, in 2003 a mayoral election in East
Chicago, Indiana, and in 2005 a state senate race in Tennessee
were both overturned due to voter fraud. As the Supreme Court noted
in its decision in 2008 upholding Indiana's photo identification
requirement, flagrant examples of voter fraud "have been documented
throughout this Nation's history by respected historians and
journalists." Those examples "demonstrate that not only is the risk
of voter fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a close
election."
Despite such extensive evidence, however, many partisan
activists, liberal academics, and media elites deny that voter
fraud exists or that any steps need to be taken to protect the
integrity of our election process. The Commission on Federal
Election Reform chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former
Secretary of State James A. Baker III profoundly disagreed. The
eminent and non-partisan Commission found that our "electoral
system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to
deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters."
The best way of determining the proper safeguards to "deter and
detect" voter fraud that endangers our democratic process is
to examine actual reported cases. By reviewing how this fraud was
discovered, investigated, and prosecuted, we can determine the best
legislative and regulatory measures to ensure our elections will
not be stolen. The studies that follow examine extensive voter
fraud in Chicago in the 1982 governor's race, a successful 14-year
conspiracy in New York that affected primary elections, the
outright theft of local elections in Greene County, Alabama,
in 1994 through absentee ballot fraud, and the growing problem of
illegal voting by noncitizens.
Elections decide not only who leads our country, but as a
consequence of that vote, the future public policies that will be
implemented by our government. The right to vote in a free and fair
election is the most basic civil right, on which depends all of the
other rights of the American people protected by the Bill of
Rights. These case studies hold lessons that can help us preserve
our democracy for another two hundred years.
Read the
case studies (PDF)
Hans A. von
Spakovsky served as a member of the Federal Election
Commission for two years. Before that, he was Counsel to the
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department
of Justice, where he specialized in voting and election issues. He
also served as a county election official in Georgia for five years
as a member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and
Elections.