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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (928)	8/11/1998 7:17:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Respond to of 13994

Dems profit from and push voter fraud: August 11, 1998 No Reform for Fraud The debate over campaign reform has been turned on its head. There were cheers at the offices of "good government" lobbying groups last week when the House passed restrictions on the independent expenditures and voter guides that so bedevil Congressional incumbents. No matter that the courts are likely to rule that these pet rocks are unconstitutional restrictions on free speech. Meanwhile the nation's elections are clearly bedeviled by a growing incidence of vote fraud. Four offered amendments would have fought this ultimate form of campaign corruption. And the good government groups lobbied to defeat every one of them. How hilarious it is to see them described as "nonpartisan." America can be justly proud of its 200-year tradition of free elections. But that's also made us complacent about dishonest or inaccurate voter counts. "We have the modern world's sloppiest electoral systems," says University of Texas political scientist Walter Dean Burnham. Indeed, voter fraud has become a bigger problem since the 1993 federal Motor Voter law required states to allow people to register to vote when they get a driver's license; 47 states don't require any proof of legal U.S. residence for such a license. Serious irregularities keep occurring in elections around the country, but when someone tries to do something about it, the usual good-government types routinely dismiss it as either nitpicking or an attempt to suppress minority voter turnout. What this strongly suggests to us is that much of the campaign reform movement is in fact intended to generate more election results congenial to the reformers' politics. It's not nitpicking to point out that 748 votes in the close California election between Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez and Bob Dornan were documented as illegal. Ms. Sanchez only won by 979 votes. A House committee just voted to reimburse both Rep. Sanchez and Mr. Dornan for the legal fees they spent in the challenge of the results, something that isn't done unless fraud has been proven. Persistent examples of voter fraud led Rep. John Peterson (R., Pa.) to propose a pilot program to combat fraud in five states. The bill would have let local officials check citizenship records with Social Security and immigration officials. Even though it included privacy safeguards, sponsors of the Shays-Meehan campaign reform bill dubbed it a "poison pill" and defeated it. A modest proposal by Rep. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.) would have simply required that voters show some form of photo ID at the polls. But the House voted 231 to 192, including 36 Republicans, that such a requirement wasn't necessary to combat election fraud. Many members says GOP party leaders flinched in pushing for photo ID in the false fear it would alienate minority voters. California's GOP Chairman Mike Schoeder says he is "disappointed" that after the proof of voter fraud in the Sanchez-Dornan race "Republican congressional leaders have elected to show no leadership to address this serious problem." As is often the case nowadays, the states appear to be taking serious problems more seriously than Washington. Florida has seen an epidemic of absentee-voter fraud. This year irregularities led to the invalidation of Miami's mayoral election and 15 arrests. The legislature passed an anti-fraud bill with bipartisan support that was then signed into law by Democratic Governor Lawton Chiles. It not only requires photo ID, but makes most voter fraud crimes a third-degree felony. The state is purging its voter rolls of felons, non-residents and the deceased. It is also erecting 200 billboards that ask the public to "Stamp Out Voter Fraud" by calling an 800 number hotline. Everyone professes to worry about a low voter turnout in this November's elections. But as turnout drops, fraudulent vote operations have a greater chance of actually altering the results. Bad elections breed cynicism. If voters come to question the basic legitimacy of some elections, no amount of tinkering with the campaign finance laws is going to matter much. interactive.wsj.com.