The Center for Cost Effective Government, a New York-based think tank, has published a White Paper analyzing what it terms as a serious diminishing of voting integrity safeguards.
The report emphasizes that numerous actions taken in several states after the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a loosening of election rules which could lead to voter fraud and a sharp dilution of confidence the American public has in the electoral system.
The Center notes that since COVID, the United States has become an outlier among Western democracies by incorporating massive mail-in voting, expanded ballot harvesting, and an increased reliance on electronic voting machines.
Moreover, the paper cites multiple instances where states modified their election rules in an improper, and often illegal, fashion. Many of these irregularities were cited in a brief issued by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, but unfortunately were not considered on the merits when the court dismissed the challenge on the technical grounds of inadequate standing.
The Center’s Executive Director, Steve Levy, former New York State Assemblyman and Suffolk County Executive, raised concerns that ballots are now being mailed out to Americans, even if they are not requested, while the use of mail-in voting has exploded and rules governing the verification of absentee ballots have been considerably weakened. All this was coupled with an explosion of the use of ballot harvesting and the placement of drop boxes, each diluting the chain of custody between the voter and election boards.
Examples of these lower standards include:
- Some states now simply require only one election official to verify the validity of the signature, as opposed to the two that were previously needed.
- No longer requiring the signatures on absentee ballots to match the one on file with the board of elections.
- Automatically registering residents to vote upon their applying for driver’s licenses, often with no proof of citizenship.
- States refusing to purge the voter rolls of those registered who have died or moved from their registered residence.
- Some voters were allowed to correct their mail-in ballots, contrary to existing statutes, while others were not.
- Undated ballots were counted.
- There was sworn testimony of ballots being improperly backdated and counted.
- Drop boxes were allowed without proper chain of custody and without legal authority.
- The need to list an address and have a witness was eliminated in numerous jurisdictions.
- Mail-in ballots were illegally sent out to millions of voters who never requested them, in violation of state law.
In discussing the dangers of diminished signature verification, the report cited an experiment conducted by a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The reporter was in contact with nine individuals who had received absentee ballots, some in the name of previous registrants who had died or moved away. The reporter thereupon signed the names of each voter in his own penmanship and had the voters trace over the reported signature as they were signing their ballot. Thus, it was the reporter’s signature for each of their names that was sent to the board of elections. An alarming eight of the nine bogus signatures were accepted by the board.
How many other such bogus signatures were accepted throughout the nation? “The answer is, we just don’t know and that is the problem,” the report concludes.
“Election irregularities are demonstrably real, and are a concern regardless of their impact on election outcomes. Any amount of election irregularity should be prevented if we wish to maintain the American public’s confidence in our electoral system,” the report states.
While the mainstream media maintains that claims of voter irregularities since the 2020 election have been “debunked,” the Center’s white paper provides specific examples that prove irregularities were indeed real and, at times, quite significant.
“Moreover, talking points that the courts have rejected all the challenges to the election irregularities are inaccurate,” said Levy, “given that the overwhelming majority of the challengers were dismissed, not on the merits, but rather due to claims of being moot after the election or for a lack of standing.”
Some examples of these irregularities are listed below.
- Secretaries of State usurped the exclusive jurisdiction of state legislators in enacting election reforms that diluted election safeguards.
- Secretaries unilaterally and improperly changed the rules to prevent disqualification of a signature, unless done so unanimously by a three-member panel.
- Secretaries improperly gave orders claiming all signatures are presumed verified.
- Secretaries unilaterally and Improperly changed the rules as to when an absentee ballot is permitted, and up to what date it can be accepted.
- Settlements of lawsuits by the Secretaries on election rule changes without obtaining legislative approval.
- Many of these examples resulted in court decisions finding that the actions of rogue secretaries of state actually did violate the law, yet elections were not overturned.
The report goes on to ask: “Can it still be said that there was no proof of voter irregularities in 2020? The bigger question is whether we will do anything to eliminate the potential for such irregularities for future elections. Our faith in our precious electoral system is at stake, especially given the fact that a 2023 survey found that 75% of likely voters had concerns about the security of our elections. https://excellenceinpolling.com/poll/2023-national-voter-pulse-poll/
“The problem related to fraud is that we don’t know what we don’t know. Thus, we must endeavor to ensure that every logical measure is employed to at least reduce, to the greatest extent feasible, the possibility that fraud will occur,” said Levy.
The white paper states that fraud and/or irregularities of the past were remarkably exacerbated in 2020, as the use of mail-in voting skyrocketed at the very same time that safeguards to protect the veracity of the mailed ballots were significantly eroded.
The Center cites the 2005 commission headed by former President Jimmy Carter which stated that absentee ballots are “the largest source of potential voter fraud.” Yet, the use of these absentee ballots exploded since 2020.
In the 2020 general election, approximately 66 million votes were cast by mail compared to 33.5 million in the 2016 general election, a 94% increase.
Georgia had 1,305,659 absentee mail-in ballots in 2020 with a rejection rate of 0.37%. In 2016, the rejection rate was 6.42%, which was 17 times greater. If the rejection rate was the same for the two elections, there would have been 83,517 fewer ballots tabulated in 2020, which was more than the 12,670-vote differential between the candidates.
Mail-in votes, which were vigorously supervised prior to the 2020 general election, were allowed to pass muster with remarkably light oversight. About two percent of absentee ballots were rejected during the primaries prior to COVID, based on data from 25 states, according to Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida. In 2020, that rejection rate plummeted to a mere 0.2% in the general election.
Similar trends have been observed in Pennsylvania, whose rate was 0.03% in 2020 compared to around 1% in 2016.
In Nevada, the rejection rate more than halved from 1.60% in 2016 to around 0.75% in the 2020 general election.
North Carolina’s rate fell from about 2.7% in 2016 to 0.8% in 2020.
The Center warned about proposed legislation to even further dilute election safeguards. Some members of Congress sought to use a massive COVID relief bill as an umbrella under which major changes to the voting process could be nationalized.
The bill would:
- bar states from requiring notarization or witness signatures on absentee ballots.
- ban any type of ID requirement.
- bar states from preventing completed absentee ballots to be picked up by candidates, political consultants, and party activists (ballot harvesting), thereby eviscerating the ballot chain of custody.
- bar states from preventing the use of drop boxes that allow political operatives to dump hundreds of ballots into a box on a street corner instead of delivering them to an election board. This bill sought just that.
- force states to allow same-day registration — the ability to register and vote at the same time on Election Day — providing no time for election officials to verify the ballot’s accuracy and validity.
The use of mail-in voting is especially concerning because many states have refused to purge their rolls of deceased voters or those who have moved. The Pew Research Center reported that, in 2012, one of every eight voter registrations, about 24 million in the United States,
“are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate,” that “more than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters,” and that “approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.”
Levy asked: “Why is it that in Europe there is no concern by the public as to whether their elections are being rigged?” He added, “These countries have rejected electronic voting, and still use the old-fashioned paper ballots, just like we used to do a decade ago and everyone accepts the results. They also have rejected widespread mail-in balloting after experiencing excessive mail-in fraud.”
The report concludes by submitting a number of suggestions to enhance public confidence in the system.
The proposals include:
- videotaping ballot counting.
- matching ballot signatures to the signatures on file
- banning ballot drop-off boxes
- ending ballot harvesting
- requiring ID when seeking a mail-in ballot
- requiring, and enforcing, two-party oversight
- requesting ballots to be mailed, not mailed out indiscriminately
- purging the rolls of voters who died or moved
- limiting the use of electronic voting
“There have been numerous concerns raised in the last few years about threats to democracy,” said Levy, “but perhaps none are as real as the continued dilution of election safeguards to the point where Americans of all political stripes start doubting election veracity.”