No one disputes the need for absentee or mail-in ballots for people who cannot make it to their neighborhood polling places on Election Day, such as because they are sick, physically disabled, or serving the country abroad, or because they cannot make it to the polls for some other legitimate reason. But changing the U.S. election system to no-fault absentee balloting, in which anyone can vote with a mail-in ballot without a reason, or to mail-only elections, in which voters no longer have the ability to vote in person, is an unwise and dangerous policy that would disenfranchise voters and make fraud far easier.
Mail-in ballots are completed and voted outside the supervision and control of election officials and outside the purview of election observers, destroying the transparency that is a vital hallmark of the democratic process. The many cases of proven absentee-ballot fraud in The Heritage Foundationâs Election Fraud DatabaseREF show that mail-in ballots are susceptible to being stolen, altered, forged, and forced. In fact, a 1998 report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded that the âlack of âin-person, at-the-pollsâ accountability makes absentee ballots the âtool of choiceâ for those inclined to commit voter fraud.âREF
All states have bans on electioneering in and near polling places. In contrast, there are no prohibitions on electioneering in votersâ homes.REF This makes voters vulnerable to intimidation and unlawful âassistance,â as well as pressure by candidates, campaign staffers, political party activists, and political consultantsâall of whom have a stake in the outcome of the electionâto vote in the campaignâs interests, not their own. Thus it also potentially destroys the secrecy of the ballot process, another basic and important hallmark of American elections for more than a century.
This type of electioneering is a particular problem in the 27 states that allow âvote harvesting,âREF as well as in the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions expressly allow any third party to pick up a completed absentee ballot from the voter and deliver it to election officials. Twelve of these states âlimit the number of ballots an agent or designee may return,â but there is no information on whether that limitation is enforced.REF
Vote harvesting is such a common practice in some states that harvesters (or ballot brokers) are paid by campaigns to collect absentee ballots from voters and âeven have their own region-specific names. In Florida, they are known as âboleteros.â In Texas, they are called âpolitiqueras.ââREF
The differing approaches to the return of absentee ballots can be seen in the contrast between, for instance, North Carolina and California. North Carolina allows (apart from the voter) only âa voterâs near relative or the voterâs verifiable legal guardianâ to return an absentee ballot.REF California had a similar law, but amended it in 2016, effective in the 2018 election.REF Prior to the change, only the relatives of a voter or someone living in the same household could return an absentee ballot.REF California eliminated that restriction and now allows a voter to âdesignate any person to return the ballotâ (emphasis added), exposing California residents to intimidation and pressure in their homes by representatives of candidates, campaigns, and political parties.REF
Mail-in ballots certainly make illegal vote buying easier since the buyer can ensure that the voter is voting the way he is being paid to vote, something that cannot happen in a polling place. This is illustrated by the 2019 conviction of a city council candidate in Hoboken, New Jersey. Frank Raia was convicted for âorchestrating a widespread schemeâ that targeted and bribed low-income residents for their absentee ballots in a 2013 election. Sources told a local reporter that âthe operation began in 2009, when changes in state law eased requirements for voting by mail. Prior to that a resident needed to provide a reason why they couldnât make it to the poll in order to get an absentee ballot.âREF
Mail-in elections and absentee ballots also subject the election process and the votes of the public to the problem of ballots being misdirected or not delivered by the Postal Service. According to a Public Interest Legal Foundation analysis of reports filed by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) on the 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018 elections, more than 28 million mail-in ballots effectively disappearedâtheir fate is listed as âunknownâ by the EAC based on survey data sent to the EAC by state election officials.REF The EAC defines âunknownâ as mail-in ballots that âwere not returned by the voter, spoiled, returned as undeliverable, or otherwise unable to be tracked by your [state] office.âREF The EAC lists another 2.1 million ballots as âundeliverable,â meaning they were returned by the U.S. Postal Service because the registered voter did not live at the registered address.
An example of the risk posed by relying on mail delivery for the important task of making sure that a voterâs ballot gets into the ballot box is illustrated by the April 7, 2020, primary election in Wisconsin. News reports indicated that many voters never received the absentee ballots they had requested, or received them too late. After the election, â3 large tubs of absentee ballotsâ were discovered in a mail-processing facility: They were apparently never delivered.REF Similarly, âthousands of residents who requested an absentee ballotâ for the June 2, 2020, primary election in the District of Columbia never received their requested absentee ballots.REF As a result, there were long lines at polling places when those voters showed up at the radically reduced number of polling places opened by the DC government.
According to the EAC reports, another 1.3 million completed absentee or mail-in ballots were rejected by election officials in the last four federal elections for not being in compliance with relevant state rules and regulations, including signature mismatches.REF This illustrates one of the other key drawbacks of absentee ballots. Unlike a polling place where there are election officials who can answer questions or resolve any problems an individual may have with her registration or other issues, there is no election supervisor in a voterâs home who can ensure that all of the information required by state law for an absentee ballot has been properly completed by the voter. This leads directly to the disenfranchisement of otherwise eligible voters.
States, such as Washington and Oregon, that have mail-only elections have similar problems. According to the EAC reports on the past four federal elections, Oregon listed more than 170,000 ballots as âundeliverable,â almost 29,000 ballots as ârejected,â and 871,737 ballots as âunknown.â Furthermore, in a survey of voters in just one Oregon county by an assistant professor at Portland State University, 5 percent of voters admitted that âother people marked their ballots, and 2.4% said other people signed their ballot envelopes.âREF The professor suspected that âthe real number is higher, because people are reluctant to admit being party to a crime,â but if that percentage held for the rest of the state, it would mean tens of thousands of illegal ballots.REF The professor told the Los Angeles Times that she did not have much faith in the process since she is able to forge her husbandâs signature perfectly.REF
The experience of a Heritage Foundation colleague shows the type of problems that occur in a state such as Washington with mail-only elections when voter registration rolls are inaccurate. She grew up in King County, but has not lived in the state since 2012, and therefore is not an eligible voter in Washington. One of her sisters left Washington 10 years ago, registered in another state, and is also not eligible to vote in Washington. Another sister, who has Downs syndrome, has never been registered to vote by her family.
Yet every time there is an election, ballots are mailed to her parentsâ home for all three sisters. Those ballots could easily be completed and returned by the parents, or forwarded to the sisters who live out of state to be completed and returned, and election officials would be none the wiser. The colleagueâs father is particularly concerned that his daughter with Downs syndrome was somehow registered without his knowledge: âSomeone could easily take advantage of her and cast a vote under her name.â
In fact, in the 2018 election, the EAC reports that King County had more than 13,000 ballots listed as âundeliverable,â illustrating the unreliability of its voter registration list, while the fate of 352,624 ballots was listed as âunknown.âREF That âunknownâ category no doubt includes the ballots the county mistakenly mailed to the three sisters.
To understand the problems with, and the vulnerabilities of, absentee or mail-in ballots, it is useful to examine cases where fraud and voter intimidation have been proven. Here are four cases that illustrate many of these issues.REF
1. School Board Election, Fresno County, CaliforniaâNovember 5, 1991
With its recent change of law to allow vote harvesting by candidates, political parties, campaign organizations, and political guns for hire, California seems to have forgotten the lessons it should have learned from Gooch v. Hendrix, a 1993 decision by the California State Supreme Court.REF The court in that case overturned the results of consolidated school board elections in Fresno County due to fraud and âtamperingâ with absentee ballots.REF
The November 5, 1991, election was for school board positions in one high school and four elementary school districts. In essence, a local political organization, the Fresno Chapter of the Black American Political Association of California (BAPAC), took over the voter registration and absentee balloting process, completely controlling the application for, delivery to, completion of, and return of absentee ballots of minority voters. Additionally, a trial court found evidence of âfraud and tamperingâ with the absentee ballots by BAPAC.
BAPAC had an elaborate strategy orchestrated by Frank Revis, who headed BAPACâs Voter Education Project, to deliver the absentee ballots necessary to win the 13 seats it had targeted in these school districts. The trial court found that the plan that BAPAC volunteers and paid staff carried out was to:
- Visit registered and unregistered votersâ residences to get them to sign both a voter registration form and an absentee-ballot request form, under the proviso that BAPAC would deliver those forms to election officials and the requested ballot would be sent to BAPAC, not the voter;
- Voters were told to leave blank the part of the absentee-ballot request form in which it asked for the address to which the absentee ballot should be sent;
- BAPAC took the forms to its headquarters and filled in the address to which the absentee ballot should be sentâthe address for the Voting Education Project, the home residence of Frank Revis;REF
- When BAPAC received the absentee ballots from election officials, BAPAC staff delivered the ballots to votersâ homes;
- Voters were âencouraged to vote in the presenceâ of the BAPAC vote harvesters, who then collected the completed ballot for delivery to election officials.REF
Given BAPACâs unsupervised access to all of these absentee ballots, it is unsurprising that the group took advantage of voters, who, according to the BAPAC president, were targeted through a âhighly selective process.âREF Numerous witnesses testified at a five-day trial about their experiences with BAPAC that illustrate all of the problems with, and vulnerabilities of, the absentee balloting process. The trial included the testimony of:
- A voter who did not sign the absentee-ballot request form, nor the envelope for the absentee ballot, which had been sent to BAPAC; her signatures had been forged;
- A voter who was âurgedâ by a BAPAC solicitor (through a translator) to âsign for the schoolsâ and that it was âall rightâ for his daughter to sign his absentee-ballot application;
- Another voter who said that three BAPAC staffers came to his door late at night, âtold him for whom to vote,â and âwere emphatic that he not seal his ballot.â They returned to his house when he was not home because he had not signed the ballot and told his wife âto sign her husbandâs name for himâ;
- A voter who was told to sign a âpetition for a free breakfastâ that was actually an absentee-ballot request formâan absentee ballot was later mailed to election officials by BAPAC âostensibly by himâ; and
- A voter who was visited by a candidate being supported by BAPAC along with a BAPAC staffer. The staffer filled out an absentee ballot without the voterâs consent, permission, or consultation.REF
Election officials sent almost 1,300 ârequestedâ absentee ballots to BAPAC; 269 were never returned, and BAPAC could not account for what had happened to them. Of the remaining 1,023 ballots, 63 were disqualified for invalid signatures (signatures that did not match voter signatures on file); 93 were disqualified because there âhad been fraud and tamperingâ with those ballots; and the rest were disqualified due to unlawful and illegal conduct by BAPAC, including using its own address for the absentee-ballot delivery address instead of that of the voters.REF
One of the problems noted by the court, a problem which applies to many election fraud cases, is that âonce illegal ballots are cast and comingled with the legal ballots, they cannot be traced to reveal for whom they were cast.âREF But the election ended up being overturned by the California Supreme Court because the âwidespread illegal voting practices that permeated this electionâincluding fraud and tamperingâ with absentee ballots and other âillegal votes affected the outcomes of the consolidated elections.âREF
2. Mayoral Election, Miami, FloridaâNovember 4, 1997
In the Miami mayoral election held on November 4, 1997, incumbent Joe Carollo won a plurality in a field of five candidates, but was 155 votes short of winning a majority. Carollo won a majority of the in-person precinct votes, but his challenger, Xavier Suarez, won a majority of the absentee ballots; Carollo âwould have won outright on Nov. 4â if not for âSuarezâs lopsided advantage in absentees.âREF Carollo then lost the run-off election on November 13 when Suarez received two-thirds of the absentee votes cast in the election. However, the November 4 election was overturned, and Carollo was returned to office, after a court found evidence of widespread, massive fraud involving 5,000 absentee ballots.REF A Miami-Dade County grand jury in 2012 summarized what happened:
In 1997, the City of Miami had one of its most memorable elections. The mayoral election for that year was plagued with widespread absentee ballot fraud. Many absentee ballots were filled out by boleteros, ⌠one absentee ballot was cast in the name of a voter who was already dead, ⌠charges were filed against fifty-five (55) persons, including a City of Miami Commissioner (charged with being Accessory After the fact to Voter Fraud), his Chief of Staff, and the Chief of Staffâs father. The Commissioner, Chief of Staff and the father were all convicted and sentenced to jail. Collectively, findings of guilt were entered against fifty-four (54) of the fifty-five (55) defendants and one was sent to a pretrial diversion program. On the civil side in a lawsuit filed by the mayoral candidate who lost the election, the judge found that fraud was involved in so many of the absentee ballots that he threw them out. That action resulted in the losing candidate being declared the winner of that mayoral election.REF
As the grand jury explained in a footnote, and as previously mentioned, boleteros âroughly translated, means âticket-personâ and is used for a person who assists in collecting absentee ballots, primarily helping elderly and disabled voters.â As case after case proves, all too often these boleteros do not just assist votersâthey fill out the votersâ ballots or intimidate and pressure voters to vote for the candidates who are paying the boleteros to collect the ballots. Others go even further and alter the choices of the voters or forge witness and voter signatures, much of which seemed to have happened in the Miami case.
The Florida state court of appeals that upheld the findings of the trial court noted that the 1997 election was overturned because the evidence showed an extensive âpattern of fraudulent, intentional and criminal conduct that resulted in such an extensive abuse of the absentee ballot laws that it can fairly be said that the intent of these laws was totally frustrated.âREF The fraud was so pervasive that âthe integrity of the election was adversely affected.âREF
Miami Commission District 3 was the focal point of the fraud; in fact, the district âwas the center of a massive, well-conceived and well-orchestrated absentee ballot voter fraud scheme.âREF The scheme included stolen ballots, ballots cast by voters using false registration addresses, ballots falsely witnessed, and hundreds of ballots cast that violated state statutory requirements or were âprocured or witnessed by the 29 so-called âballot brokersâ who invoked their privilege against self-incrimination instead of testifying at trial.âREF
One of the Suarez volunteers criminally charged in the case was caught âtrying to buy fake absentee ballots that used the names of dead peopleâ who were still on the voter registration roll, demonstrating the mischief that can be caused by the failure of election officials to maintain the accuracy of their voter rolls.REF The ruling by the trial court also cited âwitness after witnessâ who testified to âa catalogue of abuses that included ballots cast by persons who did not ask for an absentee ballot, who did not live in [Miami] or did not know the person who supposedly witnessed their signatures.âREF
In a description that correctly summarizes the effect that fraud has on all of the voters in an election, the trial court concluded that the absentee-ballot fraud in the Miami mayorâs race âliterally and figuratively, stole the ballot from the hands of every honest voter in the City of Miami.âREF
Much of the wrongdoing in the election was uncovered through investigative reporting by the Miami Herald, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for this reportingâquite a contrast to the work of so many in the media today, who seem to spend most of their time trying to deny that election fraud occurs.REF
Among the findings of the Miami Heraldâs extensive, in-depth investigation were:REF
- Volunteers, including a former food stamp worker, who pressured elderly food-stamp recipients into voting for Suarez;
- Inner-city, âpoor and homelessâ voters who were transported in âwhite vans and beat-up carsâ to County Hall to vote by absentee ballotREF and then to the âback lot at St. John Baptist Churchâ where they were paid $10 apiece for their votes by âa man with a wad of cashâ;
- Among the numerous witnesses to this vote-buying operation was one who lived in an apartment overlooking the church lot (and took $10 himself) who estimated that the operation, which went on all day, paid off â300 or 400 peopleâ;
- The man âwith a wad of cashâ admitted that he had participated in âtwo or threeâ such vote-buying schemes in the past, a clear indication that this type of fraud was not unique to the 1997 mayorâs race;
- Fraudulent absentee ballots coming from homes of supporters of a commissioner involved in the fraud;
- A man who signed as a witness the absentee ballot of a voter who had been dead for four years, and who gathered dozens of other fraudulent ballots; that same dead voter had âvoted three other times since his burial in a pauperâs graveâ;
- Other dead Miamians voted, including a Haitian immigrant (and U.S. citizen) who voted in his first and only election in 1996; he died in May 1997, and his registration was cancelled by election officials; however, his name was âresurrectedâ at a polling place in the mayorâs race when his name was âhandwritten onâŚthe precinct voter roll, along with an obvious forgery of his signatureâ;
- Many votes by nonresidents, including employees of the city, âeven though their homes are miles outside city limitsâ; ârecords show that many had been voting for years, in election after electionâcancelling the votes of real Miami residents and taxpayersâ;
- Campaign workers who âregistered people to vote at addresses where they didnât live, ⌠punchedREF votersâ absentee ballots without permission, ⌠cast ballots in the names of people who insist they did not vote, ⌠signed dozens of ballots as witnesses even though they werenât present when the voters signed the envelopesâ;
- Similar behavior by a nonprofit organization barred by law from engaging in political activity that had received two million dollars in grants from city officials, including completing absentee ballots without the permission of voters;
- Elderly voters who said âsomeone cast ballots in their namesâ and voters who said âthey didnât voteâ and that the âsignatures on the [absentee] ballots are forgeriesâ;
- Six adult members of the same family, registered at the same address in Miami, all of whom voted in the election even though only one of them lived in Miami (this was just one of numerous such examples); and
- Votes by convicted felons who had not yet regained their right to vote, including muggers, con artists, car thieves, robbers, drug traffickers, murderers, a flasher who beat his cellmate to death, and an ex-Miami detective who âcovered up the murder of a drug dealer.â
Although this case concentrated on absentee ballots, the Miami Heraldâs investigation found that dozens of âineligible voters came and voted at the poll,â too.
One poignant story uncovered by the Miami Herald demonstrates how elderly and disabled voters can easily be manipulated and pressured in their homes, hospitals, or nursing homes where there are no election officers or poll watchers to supervise or observe the voting process. âI was taken advantage ofâ Ada Perez told the investigative reporters. A campaign operative tracked down Perez, 70, at the hospital where she was recovering from a severe stroke. She described how the operative âbadgered her to vote for Suarez, then finally took her ballot and punched it for her.â Her âeyes welling with tears,â Perez said her âvote was stolenâŚ. They know our eyesight is not good and we are not well. What kind of person would take advantage of the elderly?âREF
Although the trial court had ordered a new election due to the widespread fraud, the court of appeals overruled that decision and instead reinstated Carollo as the mayor since he won a majority of the votes once the fraudulent ballots were discounted. The court said that the proper remedy âand the public policy of the State of Floridaâ in the face of âmassive absentee voter fraudâ was âto not encourage such fraudâ by holding a new election:
Rather, it must be remembered that the sanctity of free and honest elections is the cornerstone of a true democracyâŚ. [W]ere we to approve a new election as the proper remedy following extensive absentee voting fraud, we would be sending out the message that the worst that would happen in the face of voter fraud would be another electionâŚ.
Further, we refuse to disenfranchise the more than 40,000 voters who, on November 4, 1997, exercised their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote in the polling places of MiamiâŚ. [P]ublic policy dictates that we not void those constitutionally protected votesâŚ. [A] candidate who wins an election by virtue of obtaining a majority of the votes cast is entitled to take office as a result thereof, and not be forced into a second electionâŚwhen the said second election only comes about due to absentee ballot fraud, in the first election, that favored one of his or her opponents.REF
3. Democratic Mayoral Primary Election, East Chicago, IndianaâMay 6, 2003
The absentee-ballot fraud that occurred in the 2003 mayoral primary in East Chicago, Indiana, was so pervasive that the U.S. Supreme Court cited it as an example of proven fraud when it upheld Indianaâs new voter ID law in 2008. In Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the Supreme Court noted that âIndianaâs own experience with fraudulent voting in the 2003 Democratic primary for East Chicago Mayorâthough perpetrated using absentee ballots and not in-person fraudâdemonstrate [sic] that not only is the risk of voter fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.âREF
That is certainly what happened in East Chicago, and it is why the Indiana Supreme Court overturned the results of the election.REF George Pabey was challenging the incumbent mayor, Robert Pastrick. Of the 8,227 votes cast on Election Day, Pabey received 199 more votes than the incumbent mayor. But of the 1,950 absentee ballots cast, the mayor had 477 more votes than Pabey, giving the incumbent a victory with a margin of 278 votes.REF
However, the trial judge concluded after a week-and-a-half trial, and hearing from 165 witnesses, that the mayor and his cronies had âperverted the absentee voting process and compromised the integrity and results of that election.â The judge found âdirect, competent, and convincing evidence that established the pervasive fraud, illegal conduct, and violations of elections lawâ that proved the âvoluminous, widespread and insidious nature of the misconduct.âREF The fraud âcompromised the integrity and results of that election.âREF
The âpervasive fraud and illegal conductâ included, but, as the judge noted, was not limited to, the following:
- âa predatory patternâ by Pastrick supporters of âinducing voters that were first-time voters or otherwise less informed or lacking in knowledge of the voting process, the infirm, the poor, and those with limited skills in the English language, to engage in absentee votingâ;
- âproviding compensation [bribes] and/or creating the expectation of compensation to induce voters to cast their ballot via the absentee processâ;
- âassistingâ voters in completing their ballots, that is, pressuring people to vote for Pastrick, and directly watching the voters while they âmarked and completed their absentee ballotsâ;
- âthe use of vacant lots or the former residences of voters on applications for absentee ballotsâ;
- âthe possession of unmarked absentee ballots by Pastrick supporters and the delivery of those ballots to absentee votersâ;
- âthe possession of completed and signed ballotsâ by Pastrick operatives even though they were not authorized by law to have those ballots;
- âthe routine completion of substantive portions of absentee ballot applications by Pastrick supporters to which applicants simply affixed their signatures,â which were then delivered to Pastrickâs campaign headquarters and photocopied before delivery to election officials; and
- votes cast by city employees âwho simply did not reside in East Chicago.âREF
The trial judge said that this primary provided a âtextbookâ example of the âchicanery that can attend the absentee vote cast by mailâŚ. [I]nstances where the supervision and monitoring of voting by Pastrick supporters and the subsequent possession of ballots by those malefactors are common.â The judge also determined that Pastrick supporters preyed on âthe naĂŻve, the neophytes, the infirm and the needy,â subjecting them to âunscrupulous election tactics.âREF
This case illustrates that, all too often, those targeted by absentee-ballot vote thieves are the most vulnerable in society. In 2012, Anthony DeFiglio, a local Democratic committeeman in Troy, New York, pleaded guilty to falsifying business records in a case involving absentee-ballot fraud in a 2009 primary election. Votersâ signatures were forged on absentee-ballot request forms, submitted without their knowledge, and then their absentee ballots were fraudulently completed and submitted without their knowledge.REF
The voters whose ballots had been stolen lived in low-income housing and, when asked why they had been targeted, DeFiglio told investigators that those voters were âa lot less likely to ask any questions.âREF Another Democratic operative who admitted to forging absentee-ballot applications said that he had âbeen present when âballots were voted correctlyâ by party operatives. Voted correctly is a term used for a forged application or ballot.âREF
The Pabey case also illustrates the difficulty of detecting and investigating election fraud. This fraud occurred right under the noses of local election officials and prosecutors. The only reason it was discovered is because the losing candidate, George Pabey, challenged the outcome, a very expensive and resource-intensive task. The trial judge was âcognizant of the difficulties faced by Pabey in discovering and presenting evidenceâ of the fraud, stating:
Given the voluminous, widespread and insidious nature of the misconduct, petitioner Pabey, his legal counsel, and amateur investigators faced a herculean task of locating and interviewing absentee voters, visiting multi-family dwellings and housing projects, gathering and combing through voluminous election documents, and analyzing, comparing, sifting and assembling the information necessary to present their caseâŚ. In short, the time constraints that govern election contests, primarily designed to serve important interests and needs of election officials and the public interest in finality, simply do not work well in those elections where misconduct is of the dimension and multi-faceted variety present here. REF
Moreover, the judge noted another problem in any investigation of absentee-ballot fraud: the âreluctance [of] voters to candidly discuss the circumstance surrounding their absentee vote.â The judge observed that, âIt is wholly natural, of course, that voters would be reluctant to expose themselves to potential criminal liability.â Additionally, supporters of the incumbent mayor âwere involved in various attempts to influence or prevent witnessesâ testimonyâŚincluding instructing a witness to âfeign a lack of knowledge on the witness stand.ââREF This even included a local judge who told âprospective witnesses that they did not have to testify unless they had been paid a $20.00 witness fee.âREF
The Indiana State Supreme Court also discussed the difficulty faced by judges and courts in evaluating âdeliberate conduct committed with the express purpose of obscuring the election outcome based on legal votes castâ that is âmore invidious and its results difficult to ascertain and quantify.â This includes âschemes that seek to discourage proper and confidential voting or that endeavor to introduce unintended or illegal votes into the outcome [that] will inevitably produce outcome distortions that defy precise quantification.âREF
The court found that a new election was not only justified, it was âcompelledâ because âa deliberate series of actions occurred making it impossible to determine the candidate who received the highest number of legal votes cast in the election.âREF
4. Congressional Election, Ninth District, North CarolinaâNovember 6, 2018
The only challenged congressional race in the 2018 federal election was in the Ninth Congressional District in North Carolina, a district that spans âeight counties along the Stateâs central southern border.âREF The incumbent, Representative Robert Pittenger (R), had been defeated in the Republican primary by Mark Harris. Harris faced his Democratic opponent, Dan McCready, in the November 6 general election.
After the votes were tallied at the end of Election Day, Harris had apparently defeated McCready by 905 votes, a margin of only 0.3 percent of all the ballots cast in the election.REF The ânumber of returned absentee ballots [10,500] far exceeded the margin between Harris and McCready.âREF
However, the North Carolina State Board of Elections (âthe Boardâ) refused to certify the results of the election when evidence surfaced of âconcerted fraudulent activities related to absentee by-mail ballots,â including illegal vote harvesting by a political consultant and his associates.REF In North Carolina, only the voter and âa voterâs near relative or the voterâs verifiable legal guardianâ is allowed to return a completed absentee ballot to election officials.REF
After an intensive investigation that included 142 voter interviews and â30 subject and witness interviews,âREF as well as public hearings, the Board overturned the results of both the congressional race and two local contests, ordering a new election. The Board concluded that the election âwas corrupted by fraud, improprieties, and irregularities so pervasive that its results are tainted as the fruit of an operation manifestly unfair to the voters and corrosive to our system of representative government.âREF The evidence of a âcoordinated, unlawful, and substantially resourced absentee ballot schemeâ was âoverwhelming.âREF
The absentee-ballot scheme was âenabled by a well-funded and highly organized criminal operationâ run by Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr., a well-known political gun for hire in North Carolina and convicted felon (for insurance fraud) who had worked for numerous candidates. In this election, he was being funded by the Harris campaign (as well as other candidates, such as Bladen County Sheriff candidate James McVicker) through a consulting firm called Red Dome Group, but he had previously worked for Democratic candidates, too.REF
Among the findings of the Board were the following:REF
- Absentee ballot ârequests were fraudulently submitted under forged signatures, including a deceased voterâ;
- Dowless paid workers he hired âin cash to collect absentee request forms, to collect absentee ballots, and to falsify absentee ballot witness certificationsâ; their pay depended on how many forms they collected;
- In addition to using blank absentee-ballot request forms, Dowless would âpre-fillâ the forms using information on voters obtained from prior elections, so that his workers could have the voters simply sign the formâwhich sometimes included Social Security and driverâs license numbers and birth dates as well;
- The absentee-ballot request forms were photocopied before being turned into election officials for later use in other elections or for other purposes;
- Because Dowless âmaintained photocopies of completed absentee by mail request forms from prior electionsâincluding votersâ signatures and other information used to verify the authenticity of a requestâDowless possessed the capability to submit forged absentee by mail request forms without votersâ knowledge and without detection by elections officialsâ;
- Dowless would withhold the absentee ballot request forms and only submit them âat times strategically advantageous to his ballot operation,â and he would track when âballots had been mailed by elections officials using publicly available dataâ;
- One of the Dowless staffers even started forging her motherâs name as a witness on absentee-ballot envelopes because âshe had witnessed too manyâ such envelopes under her own name and signature;
- During the general elections, âsome voters discoveredâ that absentee-ballot request forms âwere submitted on their behalf, but without their knowledge, consent, or signatureâ;
- Dowless and his workers would go to votersâ homes after absentee ballots had been delivered to collect the ballots, often signing as witnesses, even though they had not seen the voter sign the ballots, and pressuring voters by âpush[ing] votes for Harrisâ;
- Other absentee ballots were collected uncompleted, and Dowless and his crew âfraudulently voted blank or incompleteâ ballots at âDowlessâs home or in his officeâ;
Dowless took other steps, designed to avoid raising any âred flagsâ with election officials, that provide a practical playbook for avoiding detection by election officials of large-scale absentee-ballot fraud involving literally hundreds of ballots.REF These included:
- Delivering small batches of absentee ballots to the post office;
- Ensuring that ballots were mailed from post offices geographically close to where the voter whose ballot had been stolen lived;
- Dating the false witness signatures with the same date as the voterâs signature;
- Using the same color ink for witness signatures as the voterâs signature, even âtracing over existing signatures to ensure conformityâ;
- Ensuring that stamps were ânot placed in such a way as to raise a red flag for local elections administrators,â such as âaffixing the stamp upside-downâ;
- Taking some âcollected ballots back to the voter for hand delivery [by the voter] to the local Board of Electionsâ; and
- Limiting the number of times false witness signatures appeared on ballots.REF
Dowless would not testify before the Board after it refused to grant him immunity. The Board found that in addition to his election fraud, he engaged in âwitness tampering and intimidationâ to âobstruct the Boardâs investigation.âREF Even candidate Mark Harris acknowledged to the Board that the testimony he heard before the Board convinced him that âa new election should be called.âREF
Due to the âcoordinated, unlawful, and well-funded absentee ballot schemeâ that âperpetrated fraud and corruption upon the election,â the Board ordered a new election, since it was not possible for the Board to âdetermine the precise number of ballotsâ that were affected.REF
A special election was held on September 10, 2019, and Dan Bishop (R), who replaced Harris as the Republican nominee after a new election was called, beat Dan McCready, the Democratic candidate who had lost to Mark Harris in the original election.REF
In February 2019, Dowless was indicted by a Wake County grand jury on charges of felony obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice, possession of absentee ballots, and perjury in connection to both the 2016 general election and 2018 primary election; and a superseding indictment adding perjury and solicitation of perjury to the charges was returned in July 2019. Six other individuals who worked for Dowless also were charged in the absentee-ballot scheme.REF The charges are still pending, although the legal problems faced by Dowless worsened in April 2020 when he was charged by federal prosecutors with Social Security fraud for receiving disability benefits while he was paid $130,000 in political consulting fees.REF
Conclusion
All of these cases illustrate the vulnerability of absentee or mail-in voting to fraud, forgery, coercion, and voter intimidation. Many of the elements found in these cases are currently being uncovered in an absentee-ballot fraud case unfolding in Paterson, New Jersey, involving the cityâs May 12, 2020, mail-in municipal election; four individuals, including a city councilman, have already been charged by the state attorney general.REF
Uncovering such schemes is resource-intensive and requires extensive and in-depth investigations. The admissions made by defendants and other witnesses also indicate that such unlawful actions have often occurred in prior elections without detection, investigation, or prosecution.
As Anthony DeFiglio told state police in Troy, New York, such fraud was âa normal political tacticâ used by âboth sides of the aisle.â Apparently, forging and stealing absentee ballots was commonplace in Troy.REF DeFiglioâs patronizing statement that low-income voters were targeted because âthey are a lot less likely to ask questionsâ about their ballotsREF illustrates why, all too often, other perpetrators of absentee-ballot fraud target poor, disabled, and minority voters.
Preventing this type of fraud is important to securing the integrity of the election process and ensuring public confidence in election outcomes, which is an essential ingredient of a stable democratic republic. Encouraging even more mail-in voting and relaxing security protocols, such as witness or notarization requirements, is a dangerous policy.
As the Miami-Dade grand jury stated in 1997 in the midst of the widespread absentee-ballot fraud that corrupted the election process in the Miami mayorâs race:
The right to vote defines the essence of American citizenship. It provides the bedrock upon which our democratic form of government survives. The greatest social struggles in our history, from the emotional impetus for the American Revolution itself, to the struggle for womenâs suffrage and the battle for civil rights, have all had at their core the acquisition of the vote for those who were disenfranchised. To a democracy, there can be no greater crime than voter fraud. A single falsely cast vote corrupts the entire electoral process.REF
Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, of the Institute for Constitutional Government, at The Heritage Foundation.