Commonwealth Attorney Michael Herring. Photo credit: Times-Dispatch.
by James A. Bacon
Not long ago, I dissed the need for a Voter ID law in Virginia on the grounds that it was a solution in search of a problem. Electoral fraud in the Old Dominion, I suggested, was such a rarity that there was no need to get people riled up. It just gave ammo to Democrats who charged Republicans with “voter suppression.” Just let sleeping dogs lie, I said.
Well, the sleeping dog just got up and started biting people. Foolish me.
Yesterday, a Richmond grand jury indicted 10 convicted felons on charges of electoral fraud for allegedly falsifying information on their voter registration forms during the 2008 presidential election, the Times-Dispatch reports today. The charges stem from an initiative in which the State Board of Elections had forwarded hundreds of referrals of possibly fraudulent registration forms to the state police. The state police forwarded 70 to the City of Richmond Commonwealth Attorney’s office.
It appears that the Richmond registrar’s office handled more voter registration transactions in the three months preceding the 2008 presidential election than in the entire fiscal years of the previous two presidential elections. Commonwealth Attorney Michael Herring attributed the allegedly fraudulent registration to the activity of unnamed “solicitors” who urged the felons to indicate on the form that they had not been convicted of a crime.
“The real criminal actors here are the solicitors, who are telling these people, ‘Don’t worry about it; sign up,” Herring said. “They kind of disappear like ghosts.”
Herring said he did not know whom the felons voted for. But we can take an educated guess. In 2008, community action groups like ACORN were conducting massive voter registration drives, especially in the African-American community, to drum up support for Barack Obama. This is precisely the reason that Republicans distrust the integrity of the electoral process, and that distrust is the impetus behind the Voter ID laws. It is not immediately apparent to me how Voter ID laws would address the problem of false registrations, however. I repeat myself: It may be a solution in search of a problem.
But voter fraud is obviously real. And fraud of this type apparently is hard to prevent. Herring suggested having undercover police posing as felons, but that sounds impractical. Would it not be possible to cross-reference the names of registered voters with the names of convicted felons? Perhaps that’s what the State Board of Elections did — the article is not clear on that point.
But I do await the reaction of Democrats who harp on the topic of “voter suppression.” Do they acknowledge that a voter fraud problem does, in fact, exist? Are they really interested in protecting the integrity of the electoral process — or are they just trying to stack the deck in their favor?
