Everything you need to know about a handful of illegal votes being cast and counted in Michigan and Colorado; ballots in other states being burned, stolen, and lost; and unlocked drop boxes being left unattended. Remember, America, get out there and vote, because your ballot will probably be okay and get counted.
Worrisome Ballot-Handling
We had better hope that none of the races in Michigan come down to one vote, because the state admitted last week that one illegal vote has been cast and it can’t be removed from the count.
You may have seen that last week, prosecutors filed charges against a Chinese citizen studying at the University of Michigan after he reportedly cast a ballot at an Ann Arbor early voting site. Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson and Washtenaw County prosecutor Eli Savit issued a statement: “We are grateful for the swift action of the clerk in this case, who took the appropriate steps and referred the case to law enforcement. We are also grateful to law enforcement for swiftly and thoroughly investigating this case. Anyone who attempts to vote illegally faces significant consequences, including but not limited to arrest and prosecution.”
I don’t want to take away any credit from that clerk or anyone else, but apparently catching this 19-year-old did not require Sherlock Holmes:
The ballot was cast at an early voting site at the University of Michigan Museum of Art on State Street, according to the Ann Arbor city administrator.Later, the UM student voter contacted the local clerk’s office, asking if he could somehow get his ballot back, according to Benson’s office. . . .In a message to the Ann Arbor City Council members, obtained by The Detroit News, Milton Dohoney Jr., the city’s administrator, said there had been an instance of “potential voter fraud in Ann Arbor” involving a University of Michigan student who’s a green card holder.“Through a series of actions, the student was apparently able to register, receive a ballot and cast a vote,” Dohoney wrote in an email Monday. “Based upon the scenario that we’re hearing this morning, the student was fully aware of what he was doing, and that it was not legal”
It’s probably easier to catch an illegal voter when he gets cold feet and comes back later and asks for his ballot back.
“Noncitizen voting is an extremely isolated and rare event,” Benson and Savit insist. Eh, as far as they know.
To register to vote and cast a ballot in the 2024 election that will be counted, the Chinese citizen didn’t have to pull off an elaborate or complicated scheme. The student “registered to vote on Sunday using his UM student identification and other documentation establishing residency in Ann Arbor, signed a document identifying himself as a U.S. citizen and his ballot was entered into a tabulator, according to the Secretary of State’s office.”
In other words, all it takes for a non-citizen to cast a ballot in Michigan is a student ID or other form of photo ID, documentation establishing residency in the state — utility bill or credit-card bill, an account statement from a bank, report cards or transcripts, a pay stub or earnings statement — and a willingness to commit perjury by signing a document swearing he’s a U.S. citizen.
As former Grand Rapids Republican congressman Peter Meijer observed about this story, “I kept searching for what failed or was missed to explain why this was a one-off, but the only explanation was, ‘Through a series of actions, the student was apparently able to register, receive a ballot and cast a vote.’ It wasn’t a system failure — it was the system working!”
During fall term 2023, the University of Michigan had a total of 12,720 international students, scholars, faculty, and staff. Statewide, Michigan has 33,501 international students. The Migration Policy Institute estimated in 2019 that Michigan has 91,000 “unauthorized immigrants,” which is a euphemism for illegal immigrants.
Can Michigan election authorities be absolutely certain that not a single one of those other noncitizens didn’t get the same idea as this indicted student?
If you’re wondering why election officials can’t just fish out the student’s illegally cast ballot and remove it from the count, that’s because once you cast your ballot, it is no longer connected to you. That’s part of our secret-ballot system — the state maintains a record of you voting at that particular polling place, and that polling place has a pile of ballots that can be checked and rechecked to see how many votes each candidate or initiative received on a particular day, but once you put it into the machine, there’s nothing linking you to that particular ballot.
Michigan Republicans like state representative Mike Harris argue that Democrats have systematically watered down the state’s voter-ID rules and voting procedures to increase the odds of noncitizen voting instead of preventing it:
They passed laws to allow on-demand printing of ballots at voting sites, weakened voter ID standards, let people register to vote with questionable documentation, make it easier for voters to register and vote illegally at multiple locations in one day, and let people register and then vote after polls close on Election Day. The Democrats also eliminated the requirement that a voter who registers within 14 days of an election without providing a photo ID or proof of residency must vote a challenged ballot; challenged ballots are marked and can be identified and removed after they are cast.
Before 2008, Michigan issued drivers’ licenses — which would be a state-recognized form of photo ID — to residents regardless of immigration status, and the state’s Democrats wish to return to that policy. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia issue drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants.
Michigan is not the only state where election officials are admitting that fraudulent votes have gotten through their safeguards and will be counted; Colorado will count at least three fraudulent ballots:
Authorities in Mesa County are looking for whoever stole and fraudulently submitted a dozen mail ballots earlier this month. Some of the ballots were stopped during the signature verification process, which matches the signature on the envelope with what’s on file for the voter but three of the fraudulent ballots were accepted and counted. . . .[Boulder County clerk, Democrat Molly Fitzpatrick] said that while it’s deeply unfortunate that three fraudulent ballots were counted, the bigger picture is that even more stolen ballots were caught early on because of the systems that were in place. The three that did make it through were flagged by a computer system that checks signatures but eventually approved by a human judge. The Colorado Secretary of State’s office said in a press briefing on Thursday that that election worker has since been reassigned.
And then there’s Pennsylvania, where the concern isn’t (yet) fraudulent votes but suspicious last-minute voter-registration applications:
The Lehigh County district attorney is investigating hundreds of suspicious voter registration applications that came in before the Oct. 21 deadline.District Attorney Gavin Holihan and Lehigh County Chief Clerk of Elections Tim Benyo said Friday that the applications were flagged through the election office’s normal vetting process. . . .The situation appears to mirror a case in Lancaster County where officials said officials have identified hundreds of problematic voter registration applications submitted at the deadline. A separate criminal investigation is underway there, and the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office has contacted counties to see if they’re experiencing similar problems.Benyo said Lehigh County received approximately 1,800 voter registration applications from get-out-the-vote organizations around the deadline — including about 1,500 from a single organization. Benyo said about 40 percent of the total were “garbage” — blatantly wrong forms that were immediately flagged.Many of the remaining 60 percent had less prominent faults that require election officials to dig further, Benyo said. For example, a person could list an incorrect address, miswrite their driver’s license number or give a nickname instead of their legal name.
And then there’s Minnesota, where right around Halloween, the dead are rising and filling out absentee ballots:
A woman is accused of trying to vote early twice in the upcoming election.Danielle Miller faces three felony counts, including casting an illegal vote in Minnesota.According to court documents, the Itasca County auditor contacted the sheriff’s office on Oct. 9 regarding possible voter fraud with absentee ballots.The ballots were flagged because one of the signatures was that of a deceased person.The two ballots were for Miller and Rose Javorina, Miller’s mother, who died in August.The ballots were received on Oct. 7, showing each woman had signed as a witness for the other’s ballot.Miller allegedly told officers she signed both absentee ballots, saying her mom was an avid Donald Trump supporter and would’ve voted for the former president if she was still alive.
(You know Harris is weaker than the typical Democrat when even some dead voters are casting ballots for Trump. You have to give Trump credit: He really is doing better than past Republicans among the Apparition-American community.)
And then there’s Ohio. Earlier this summer, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, completed a routine review and found 459 apparent noncitizens who registered to vote but did not cast a ballot in a recent election, and 138 apparent noncitizens who cast ballots. Two weeks ago, state attorney general Dave Yost, also a Republican, announced the indictment of six people, and “a grand jury declined to indict an Oberlin College student, who according to Yost ‘appeared to have voted’ in both Washington State and Ohio.”
And then there’s Texas:
A judge has ordered a new election due to illegal votes in a judicial race in which Republican candidate Tami Pierce lost by just 449 votes to Democratic Judge DaSean Jones.“The court has found that 1,430 illegal votes were cast in the race for the 180th District Court and that it is not realistic or feasible to determine which candidate received those votes,” Judge David Peeples wrote.Peeples said many of the votes cast in the 2022 race were invalid because the people who cast them did not live in Harris County, did not show identification or had other residency-related issues.
Is noncitizen voting rare? Yes. Is it rare enough to never have an impact on an election? Probably, but we can’t be sure of that, certainly not as sure as Democrats insist. Almost every cycle we get at least one super-close election at some level of government:
As you likely remember, the 2000 presidential election came down to George W. Bush’s 537-vote win over Al Gore in Florida.
Al Franken won — many Republicans would insist “won” — the Minnesota Senate election in 2008 by 312 votes.
In the 2004 Washington gubernatorial election, Republican Dino Rossi lost by 133 votes to Democrat Christine Gregoire.
In a U.S. House election in Iowa in 2020, Democrat Rita Hart lost by only six votes to Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks.
In a 2022 Connecticut statehouse race, Democrat Chris Poulos defeated Republican Tony Morrison by one vote.
And in 2017, an election for the Virginia House of Delegates ended in a tie.
Sure, in a normal election, with a margin of thousands or tens of thousands or more, the evidence suggests that noncitizen voting is too rare to alter the outcome. But for one of those down-ticket elections where it comes down to a handful of votes?
The fact that some people exaggerate the scale of a problem does not mean that the problem does not exist. The fact that Trump, another GOP official, or your Aunt Edna on Facebook falsely claims that millions of illegal immigrants are voting does not mean that illegal voting isn’t a problem worth addressing or that additional precautions aren’t worth taking.
Then there is the separate issue of stolen or destroyed ballots. You probably heard about the torched drop boxes in Washington and Oregon. In Multnomah County, Ore., things appear to be shaking out okay: “Fire suppressant inside the ballot box protected virtually all the ballots. Only three ballots suffered damage, and [Multnomah County Elections Division] will contact those three voters, via unique identifiers on their ballot envelopes, so they can receive replacement ballots. Voters should be assured that even if their ballots were in the affected box, their votes will be counted.”
But in Clark County, Wash., it’s a different story:
Elections staff have been able to identify 488 damaged ballots retrieved from the ballot box. As of Tuesday evening, Oct. 29, 345 of those identified voters had already contacted the Elections Office to request a replacement ballot. Elections staff will mail 143 ballots to the additional identified voters tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 31.Elections personnel were unable to identify 6 of the ballots. Other ballots may have been completely burned to ash, and therefore, unidentifiable.
That is at least six, and perhaps more, perfectly legitimate votes that will not be counted because they were destroyed before the count.
You probably didn’t hear about the arsonist in Arizona who torched a mailbox that had ballots in it in late October:
Police said Klofkorn set fire to a USPS collection box on Seventh Avenue around 12:40 a.m. Thursday. After being brought into custody, Klofkorn provided the lighter he used to damage the box, court documents showed. Phoenix police said that Klofkorn admitted to the arson, knew the severity of his behavior, and wanted to be arrested.Klofkorn lit a piece of paper on fire and threw it into the collection box, according to the probable cause statement. The court record said that about 20 election ballots, along with numerous pieces of mail, were destroyed. Klofkorn said the fire was not politically motivated in a police interview.
Good news, everyone! He’s a nonpartisan fire-setting, ballot-burning maniac!
And then there’s the robbed postal truck in Berkeley, Calif.:
Residents in a Berkeley neighborhood learned their ballots may have been stolen since they never came in the mail.Julie Chervin and her neighbors are worried about what could happen if someone else casts their vote for them in the historic election since their ballots never arrived. According to local police, a postal worker reported they were robbed on October 9, and ballots and election-related mail were in the truck.
And then there’s the former GOP congressional candidate who allegedly swiped an extra ballot during a test of the voting machines:A former Republican congressional candidate is accused of stealing ballots during a test of voting machines, according to Indiana authorities.Larry L. Savage Jr., a 51-year-old man who earlier this year was a candidate in the Republican 5th District primary in Indiana, was arrested on charges of theft and destroying or misplacing a ballot, Indiana State Police said.During the Oct. 3 test in Madison County, officials discovered two of the 136 ballots were missing, state police said.The testing was livestreamed online, and the footage showed Savage fold up two of the ballots and put them in his pocket, authorities said.
You also probably didn’t hear about the ballots stolen out of mailboxes in Bend, Ore.:
The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office said stolen mail, including nearly two-dozen ballots, were found on the side of the road in Bend Friday morning.Sgt. Jay Minton told Central Oregon Daily said a large amount of mail was found near Hunnell Road and Loco Road on Bend’s north end. It was called in around 8:30 a.m. by someone who was driving in the area.Among the items were 23 ballots — according to the initial report — that were being delivered to residents, but had not yet been opened. . . .Although the ballot envelopes were not opened, several other pieces of mail were. Minton said it’s not believed the ballots were the target.
And there’s another batch of lost ballots in another part of Washington State:
Hundreds of Whitman County vote-by-mail ballots were recently lost by the U.S. Postal Service, according to the county’s auditor.Sandy Jamison, the Whitman County auditor, announced in a news release Tuesday it was brought to her attention that several Whitman County constituents never received ballots for the Nov. 5 general election.Jamison estimates 250 ballots, primarily voters with P.O. boxes in the town of Garfield, Washington, went missing after being processed by the Postal Service.
And then, down in Florida, a mailman just dumped out a pile of mail, including a ballot:
A mail carrier finished his route suspiciously early one day, then 1,000 pieces of discarded mail were found in the woods in Florida, federal authorities said.Ottis McCoy Jr. is charged with stealing, taking or abstracting mail, according to a criminal complaint filed Oct. 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. . . .Postal inspectors said they retrieved over 1,000 pieces of mail, including a ballot and 400 pieces of “political mail.”
In early October, in Sacramento County, Calif., two post-office locations were broken into and mail, including unmarked ballots, was stolen.
Beyond stolen or destroyed ballots, there’s the issue of normal human foul-ups and jurisdictions that simply can’t get absentee ballots into the hands of voters who request them in a timely manner.
In Pennsylvania, a state judge just ruled, “The Erie County Board of Elections failed to meet demand and that 13,000 to 17,000 Erie County voters may not have received their ballots in time for the election on Tuesday. . . . The judge ordered the Board of Elections to keep its offices open on Friday and Saturday, for voters to be able to request and fill out ballots, and to add a printer.” The judge estimated that up to 20,000 voters may have requested absentee ballots and never received them.
It’s a similar story in Cobb County, Ga., where “faulty equipment and a late surge in absentee ballot requests” meant that at least 3,000 voters were still waiting to get their absentee ballots as of Friday. A judge ruled that “Cobb County voters receiving their absentee ballots late can return them by Nov. 8, three days after Election Day, as long as they’re postmarked by Tuesday.”
Finally, in Fresno County, Calif., it’s not a crime, but it is a troubling lapse in judgment and opportunity for shenanigans:
Fresno County voters who used a drop box in Southeast Fresno will want to double-check that their ballots have been counted.The Fresno County Elections Department says a key for the drop box at Fancher Elementary School was left in the lock for over seven hours, leaving the box unsecured with the chance for ballots to be stolen.Someone found the key at 5:30 pm on Thursday. Officials said it was left in the lock after the box was last serviced at 10 am earlier that day. . . .[Fresno County registrar of voters James A.] Kus said there was no evidence that anything was taken and there were about 50 ballots in the box.
Do reports like these mean that any election at any level will be “stolen” — that the margin of victory will be smaller than the number of illegal votes counted, or legitimate votes that were not counted because they were stolen or destroyed? Unlikely, unless we’re talking about a race that comes down to an incredibly small margin.
But that doesn’t mean our system of elections works as well as it should, or that there are no righteous concerns. Every fraudulent vote waters down the value of your legitimate vote, and everyone who is legally eligible who wants to cast a ballot should have their ballot counted; they shouldn’t be reliant on the luck of the draw when it comes to the competence of their local postal worker or the fire-suppression systems in their local ballot drop box.
Twenty-five states require photo ID to vote, eleven states require non-photo ID, and the rest have the equivalent of a “no shirt, no shoes, no ID, no problem” policy. Note that Michigan is one of those states that does require photo ID, and it appears the University of Michigan photo ID is what that Chinese student used. What that case demonstrates is that if you don’t have some requirement that voters demonstrate proof of citizenship in the voter-registration process, noncitizens will figure out a way to vote.
Drop boxes should only be used indoors in secure buildings with door locks, alarms, security cameras, and other tools to prevent attempts to destroy or steal ballots.
I know a lot of people in Western states love vote-by-mail, but it’s a bad idea to have a lot of ballots floating around outside of election sites for long periods of time — it creates more opportunities for someone to steal ballots or for them to get lost. It’s probably a good idea to have voters turn in their completed absentee ballots at some early polling place, because it minimizes the amount of time between when a ballot is completed and when it is in the system.
