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{"id":219,"date":"2014-10-30T13:11:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T13:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/10\/could-it-happen-here.html"},"modified":"2014-10-30T13:11:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-30T13:11:00","slug":"could-it-happen-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/10\/could-it-happen-here.html","title":{"rendered":"Could it happen here?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

There have been a lot of revalations lately:<\/p>\n

An article at PJMedia<\/a> and elsewhere that a cross-check of voter records and jury duty questionnaires in Maryland revealed that enough noncitizens voted (that is, individuals who claimed ineligibility to serve on a jury due to being a noncitizen, yet voted nonetheless) that, depending on the particulars in a given race, this could shift elections.<\/p>\n

In North Carolina, Jame O\u2019Keefe got campaign officials to openly state, via hidden camera, that there\u2019s nothing wrong with noncitizen voting. \u00a0 National Review author John Fund<\/a> also describes known instances elsewhere. \u00a0Similar hidden-camera games got campaign staffers promoting double-voting for university students: \u00a0once on campus and once at home.<\/p>\n

And in Colorado, multiple pundits<\/a> have written on the potential fraud that it\u2019s mail-in balloting program invites, with \u201charvesters\u201d able to collect ballots and selectively choose which ones to put in the mail, or the possibility of dumpster diving to collect unfilled ballots to fill out. \u00a0(Though PBS says<\/a> that the procedures in place to verify that signatures match the original voter registration, so no worries!)<\/p>\n

Our elections fundamentally rely on an honor system. \u00a0We rely on our elected officials to get this right, and to prosecute fraud \u2014 but if those same officials benefited from the fraud, how much can we trust that they\u2019ll do their job? \u00a0And what\u2019s more, once an election has occurred, and the ballots have all been co-mingled, we have no means of removing those fraudulent ballots, no means of rectifying the situation. \u00a0We are dependent on election results being decisive beyond the so-called \u201cmargin of fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n

We know that, back in the days of Machine politics, and Tammany Hall, ballot-stuffing occurred unchecked, but officials now insist that our system is now beyond reproach. \u00a0And maybe it\u2019s \u201cgood enough.\u201d \u00a0Maybe it\u2019s just that the endless barrage of negative ads, of accusations that are clearly lies, means that it\u2019s far more believable that people would engage in fraud, with the same \u201cend justifies the means\u201d mentality that produces these ads, and similarly produces the campaign promises that everyone knows are false (like the magically-timed \u201cevolution\u201d of Obama on gay marriage, or the \u201ckeep your plan\u201d claims).<\/p>\n

But isn\u2019t it a bit scary that we don\u2019t really have a fix for the fraud that does occur?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"