Election Integrity Matters

By Ken Blackwell

President-elect Donald Trump blamed his loss of the popular vote on election fraud. While that’s not likely, it doesn’t matter. Vote fraud is a serious problem that can subvert elections. The Trump administration should put electoral integrity at the top of its agenda.

What sets the U.S. apart from so many other nations is that the government is accountable to the people, who actually choose their leaders. In the case of Donald Trump, they rejected the virtually unanimous advice of their “betters,” the cultural, business, and political elites who expect to rule. Average folks took back America.

The greatest threat to democracy is subversion of the electoral process. Allowing every eligible citizen to cast a ballot is obviously vitally important. But so is ensuring that those not eligible do not vote. Cheating is not a victimless crime. It threatens democracy.

Of course, the Left insists that vote fraud is a myth. Yet if that is the case, then why the steadfast resistance to the simplest forms of ballot security, like requiring voters to show valid ID or prove citizenship when they register to vote?

Obviously, there are celebrated cases of vote fraud in American history. Lyndon Johnson made it into the U.S. Senate —- and ultimately the presidency —- with just enough ballot-stuffing in Texas. Cheating in Chicago likely handed Illinois’s electoral votes, along with the presidency, to John F. Kennedy in 1960.

We know that the dead, along with foreign citizens, are voting here today. We don’t know their total numbers, and it isn’t likely a couple million. But it doesn’t have to be that many to swing a presidential election, as was evident in Kennedy’s triumph.

In three of our last six contests, relatively small vote shifts would have changed the result. A thousand extra votes for Al Gore in Florida in 2000 would have handed him the presidency. Four years later a couple hundred thousand votes in Ohio would have made John Kerry president. Last month a few tens of thousands of votes would have swung Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to Hillary Clinton, giving her victory.

Moreover, every election cycle a handful of House and Senate races are decided by small, sometimes tiny, margins. Even more so at the state and local level. If illegal voting becomes commonplace, it will change the character of American government. The consent of the governed will no longer control.