“It is our duty to protect and uphold America’s democratic process. We must work to restore North Carolinians’ trust that their vote is counted, that their voice is heard, and that they can have confidence in the outcome of our elections.”
- Election Integrity is a Cornerstone of Our Constitutional Republic – The right to vote in a free and fair election is the most basic civil right and one on which many other rights of the American people depend.
- The Electorate Must Trust the Process – Every American must be able to trust the voting process and its result; otherwise, the democratic system itself breaks down. – The security of the ballot box cannot be left to a simple honor system.
- We Have a Duty to Defend Against Fraud – Our entire voting system was designed for in-person voting; voting by mail presents serious security and logistical problems. – Congress and the states must ensure that all eligible Americans are able to vote and that their votes are not stolen or diluted by fraud or administrative errors.
As long as elections put people into positions where they can make decisions about how much the government will spend, who will receive benefits, and how the government will exercise its power, some people will attempt to cheat. Examples abound throughout our history, from the 135 percent of eligible voters who turned out for an 1844 election in New York to the infamous Ballot Box 13 in Lyndon Johnson’s 1948 Senate election. The 1997 Miami mayor’s race was overturned because of more than 5,000 fraudulent absentee ballots. A mayoral election in East Chicago, Indiana, in 2003 and a state senate race in Tennessee in 2005 were also overturned because of voter fraud. In 2013, four people in Indiana were convicted of forging signatures on the ballot petitions that qualified Barack Obama for the state’s May 2008 primary election. In 2015, a city council race in the New Jersey town of Perth Amboy was decided by a mere 10 votes. A judge overturned the election and ordered a new one after it was revealed that at least 13 illegal absentee ballots had been cast. More recently, the mayor of Gordon, Alabama, was removed from office after being convicted of voter fraud in an election that was won by only 16 votes.
As the Supreme Court of the United States recognized when it upheld the constitutionality of Indiana’s voter identification law in 2008, 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.
The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database has documented nearly 1,300 instances of voter fraud from across the country, and the number continues to grow. Many partisan activists, liberal academics, and members of the media elite deny that election fraud exists or that any action is needed to protect the integrity of our election process. The nonpartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, however, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, found that the “electoral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters.”
The right to vote in a free and fair election is a citizen’s most basic civil right, the one on which many of the other rights of the American people depend. Congress and the states can and should guarantee that every eligible individual is able to vote—and that no one’s vote is stolen.
Wake GOP advocates:
Policy Proposals (Federal)
- Require all voters in federal elections to present photographic identification, issued by the federal, state, local, or tribal government, when they vote at their polling place and to send copies of such identification when submitting an absentee ballot. Such ID should be provided free of charge to those who request it for voting purposes.
- Allow state election officials to verify U.S. citizenship of registered voters by making the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) databases available to the officials.
- Require all federal courts to notify state election officials when individuals whose names are drawn from their voter registration rolls are excused from jury duty because they are not U.S. citizens and to notify the U.S. Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution.
- Amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to allow states to strike individuals who have not voted in two consecutive federal elections from the voter rolls. These individuals must previously have been informed in writing that they will be removed unless they contact election officials by a certain time.
- Amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to clarify that states may require proof of citizenship from individuals registering to vote.
- Require DHS to inform the Department of Justice about all information it has on noncitizens who have registered for or voted in elections. Not only should aliens who have illegally registered or voted have their visas revoked and their citizenship applications rejected, but the Justice Department needs to investigate and prosecute noncitizens who have violated federal law.
- Sunset the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency created in 2002 to administer a one-time grant of federal funds to the states. Having this superfluous federal agency in place will tempt Congress to give it expanded authority to impose federal mandates through federal regulations, which could lead eventually to the complete takeover of the election process by the federal government.
- Direct the Department of Defense to create voter registration offices on all military installations to provide voting assistance to military personnel and their families and allow nonpartisan veterans groups to hold voter registration drives at commissaries or other public locations on military posts and bases.
Policy Proposals (State)
- Require all voters to present photographic identification, issued by the federal, state, or local government, when they vote at their polling place and to send copies of such identification or their driver’s license number when submitting an absentee ballot. Any individual who does not have identification should be entitled to receive it free from state authorities. Both academic studies and election results show that identification requirements do not depress the turnout of voters, including minority voters. The vast majority of voters of all parties, races, and ethnic backgrounds support such a requirement, which increases public confidence in the integrity of elections.
- Require all individuals who register to vote to provide documentation establishing that they are U.S. citizens. States have an interest in preventing dilution of the votes of their citizens at the state level and must maintain citizen-only voting rolls for federal elections. When a state issues a driver’s license to a noncitizen who is in the country legally or illegally, the license should indicate on its face that the holder is not a U.S. citizen.
- Require state and local election officials to verify the accuracy of new voter registration information against other available state and federal databases. Section 303 of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2001 requires states to coordinate their voter registration lists with “other agency databases” and to “verify the accuracy of the information provided on applications for voter registration.” Some election officials are not complying with this law and not verifying new voter registration information against other available databases, such as Department of Motor Vehicles driver’s license records and Social Security Administration records. Legislators should implement this requirement as a state law to ensure that their state election officials will follow this commonsense requirement.
- Require individuals who register by mail to vote in person the first time they vote. Section 6 of the National Voter Registration Act allows states to implement such a requirement, although it cannot apply to any voter entitled to vote by absentee ballot under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act or the Voting Accessibility of the Elderly and Handicapped Act.
- Require all individuals who register to vote by mail-in forms, whether mailed back to election officials or hand-delivered by the individual or third-party organizations, to comply with the applicable HAVA provision. HAVA requires persons who register to vote by mail and who have not previously voted in a federal election to provide a copy of certain identification documents when they register or the first time they vote, but some states have interpreted this to apply only to voter registration forms received through the mail and not to such forms when they are delivered through other means.
- Require all third-party organizations that conduct voter registration drives to write the name of their organization, as well as that of the volunteer or employee handling each registration, on the voter registration form and that all completed forms be returned to election officials within 10 days of the date on which the forms are signed by the person registering. This would allow election officials to identify which organization and individual handled voter registration forms that are found to be incomplete or fraudulent and to ensure that completed registration forms are provided to election officials on a timely basis so that they can be properly processed before the state’s pre-election registration deadline.
- Require all state courts to notify election officials when individuals whose names are drawn from the registration rolls are excused from jury duty because they are not U.S. citizens or no longer live in the jurisdiction. This would allow local election officials to remove ineligible voters and refer them for possible prosecution. Running data comparisons between voter registration addresses and property tax rolls is also recommended to detect individuals who are registering illegally at commercial addresses or vacant lots.
- Require that each state enter into agreements with other states, such as the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, to compare voter registration lists to find people who are registered in more than one state. Because there is no national voter registration list, it is relatively easy for individuals to register in more than one state without detection. Such agreements are critical to detecting and deterring double registration and possible double voting.
- Reject any effort get rid of the Electoral College. Any state compact to manipulate or alter the Electoral College requires congressional assent. Such a compact should not be approved, and any constitutional amendment to scrap the Electoral College should be rejected.
Facts & Figures
- States have the right and responsibility to ensure the integrity of their elections and to ensure that the votes of eligible voters are not stolen or diluted by fraud.
- The Constitution reserves to the states the exclusive authority for most election decisions, including voter qualifications.
- A 2012 Pew Study showed that 24 million voter registrations are inaccurate, out of date, or duplicates, with 2.8 million people registered in two or more states and 1.8 million dead people still registered.
- In 2017, the Public Interest Legal Foundation found that more than 5,500 non-citizens had registered to vote in Virginia. Of these illegal registrants, 1,852 cast nearly 7,500 ballots in a state in which two state-wide attorney general races have been decided by less than a thousand votes.
- Election fraud is a reality that has been documented repeatedly through the prosecution and conviction of criminal cases.
- A 1984 New York grand jury report detailed extensive voter registration fraud and impersonation fraud at the polls that had been carried out for 14 years in state and federal elections.
- A Chicago grand jury report described an extensive system of voter registration fraud and vote theft that resulted in 100,000 fraudulent votes being cast in the 1982 election. The U.S. Attorney estimated that at least 80,000 illegal aliens were registered in Chicago and also voting. Many other states have had similar problems.
- The Milwaukee police department’s investigation of the 2004 election, which included a comparison of the voter registration list with other records such as motor vehicle records, telephone directories, Assessor’s Office records, and U.S. Postal Service records, detailed numerous problems, such as felons and nonresidents registering and voting, as well as voters registered at commercial addresses that were clearly not residences.
