Opinion

The vote fraud that Democrats refuse to see

265 + 742 + 765 + 953 + 7,474 = 0.

This fuzzy math sums up Democrats’ orthodoxy on vote fraud: As the bulletproof evidence of fraud adds up, they still claim, “There’s nothing to see here.” Not even these hard numbers, based on verified vote-fraud cases, move their acceptance of this reality into the realm of positive integers.

This pathological denial is even more intense, now that President Trump has taken vote fraud seriously enough to appoint a bipartisan panel to get to the bottom of it.

While the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is chaired by Republicans Vice President Mike Pence and co-chaired by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (whom I have known since college, thanks to the Washington Crossing Foundation’s scholarship program for civic-minded students), its members include two Democratic secretaries of state — Maine’s Matthew Dunlap and New Hampshire’s Bill Gardner — and Alabama’s Alan Lamar King, a Democratic judge.

Never mind, leading Leftists insist. The issue is bogus, and the commission is evil.

  •  According to Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist-Vt.), “The sole purpose of this commission is to propagate a myth and to give encouragement to Republican governors and state legislators to increase voter suppression.”
  •  The Brennan Center for Justice’s Michael Waldman believes that President Trump “set up a probe of an imaginary threat.”
  •  Chris Carson, chief of the League of Women Voters, predicts that the Pence/Kobach commission will “undermine our elections by spreading falsehoods.”
  •  “The truth remains that it is more likely for someone to be struck by lightning than for someone to have committed voter fraud,” Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said in May. “Voter fraud is a non-issue in our country.”These and other Leftists ignore concrete proof that vote fraud exists:
  • In May 2016, CBS2 Los Angeles identified 265 dead voters in southern California. Many cast ballots “year after year.”
  •  The Heritage Foundation’s non-exhaustive survey confirms, since 2000, at least 742 criminal vote-fraud convictions.
  • North Carolina announced in April 2014 that 13,416 dead voters were registered, and 81 of them recently had voted. Among 35,750 North Carolinians also registered in other states, 765 voted in November 2012, both inside and outside the Tarheel State.
  •  South Carolina’s attorney general concluded in January 2012 that 953 people “were deceased at the time of their participation in recent elections.”
  •  The Public Interest Legal Foundation recently discovered that Virginia removed 5,556 non-citizens from its voter rolls between 2011 and last May. Among these non-Americans, 1,852 had cast a total of 7,474 illegal ballots across multiple elections.

Craftier liberals have inched away from the baseless “Vote fraud = Loch Ness Monster” argument. Now, some claim, vote fraud is not “widespread.”

As MSNBC host Katy Tur recently soothed her viewers: “Nobody has found any widespread instances of voter fraud.” Well, Katy, how widespread must vote fraud be before Democrats and their defenders agree that, at least, it should be investigated?

Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-Va.), a long-time Clinton confidante, vetoed a bill in February that would have required probes of elections in which the number of ballots cast exceeded the number of voters eligible to cast them. How could any honest person oppose such a measure?

During the 2000 Bush v. Gore disaster, Democrats shouted, “Count every vote!” In their more admirable moments, Democrats were among those who demanded, “One man. One vote.”

Today, in order to preserve the dodgy electoral system that seems to benefit them when fishy things happen, their battle cries have devolved into “Count every vote, but don’t worry if some of them are negated by fake ones” and “One man. One vote. Usually.”

This is pathetic. If Democrats will tolerate non-widespread vote fraud, how many phony ballots are they willing to see neutralize genuine ones? 265? 765? 7,474?

And whose legitimate ballots should be vaporized so that, in essence, fraudulent ballots can be cast and counted in peace? Sen. Sanders, let’s start with yours.