It's Probably Jeb Bush's Fault, Anyway (Jumping To Conclusions)

It's Probably Jeb Bush's Fault, Anyway

We hear much talk about faulty voting machines and shadowy conspiriacies to harass minorities into staying home on Election Day, but does anyone much care about overt, honest-to-goodness election fraud?

Some 46,000 New Yorkers are registered to vote in both the city and Florida, a shocking finding that exposes both states to potential abuses that could alter the outcome of elections, a Daily News investigation shows.

The News found that between 400 and 1,000 registered voters have voted twice in at least one election, a federal offense punishable by up to five years in prison.

That's 46,000 voters in New York City alone. Who knows the true number of multiple registrations throughout the country? As anyone who has gone to college in or moved to a different state knows, it's a trivial matter to be registered in two states at once. Shocking as this might be, this hardly anything new, as Russ Smith points out:

The News, which provided evidence of both Democrats and Republicans voting twice in recent elections, underscores the political reality that election-day corruption is as common as jaywalking and was only highlighted four years ago because of the fluke results - a virtual tie - in Florida.

I'm not holding my breath waiting for the voting rolls to be corrected (much less waiting for any arrests to be made). Correcting the rolls, after all, would probably be seen tantamount to disenfranchisement.

UPDATE: Dave Huber has a good take on the bias inherent in the story itself.

UPDATE: Reason Magazine remarks on the story, too.

Posted by Peter Dutton on August 25, 2004 2:42 PM | Politics | Permalink