Horist: Vote fraud is real, Mr. Cuomo

Perhaps it is because I am from Chicago, or perhaps it is because I spent a portion of my civic life fighting vote fraud, that I am astonished to see the Democratic Party and their advocates in the media contend that vote fraud is virtually non-existent.

CNN’s Chris Cuomo is among the most flagrant advancers of this false narrative, claiming as fact that there have only been 30 cases of vote fraud in the past ten years.  Coming from a New York Democrat family, I have to believe that Mr. Cuomo knows better.

It is based on this ridiculous claim that the left is pushing hard against President Trump’s bipartisan Voter Integrity Commission.  One might conjecture that Democrats, particularly the urban machine Democrats, fear that an in-depth examination of vote fraud will reveal them as the primary culprits, which they generally are.

The Chicago Democrat machine is notorious for stealing elections.  It is estimated by political observers and activists that a Republican needs to build at least a 100,000 vote lead in Cook County to prevail.  Most historians accept the view that the 1960 Illinois presidential electoral votes for President Kennedy were stolen by massive fraud in Cook County – and that was not the first or the last time elections have been flipped.

As an advisor to Project LEAP (Legal Elections in All Precincts), I was deeply into the investigation and prevention of chronic vote fraud.  We were joined in that effort by the League of Women Voters and other civic reform groups.  The vote fraud was so bad in some staunchly Democrat precincts, that we had to call in U.S. Marshalls as poll watchers.  Chicago’s propensity for vote fraud is so prevalent that jokes about voting “early and often” and the “graveyard vote” are an indelible part of the reputation of the Windy City.

In my own race for the 1995 Republican nomination for mayor of Chicago, a full 40 percent of the votes for that office were never counted.  They disappeared.  When I asked Mayor Daley’s top aide why, he was very candid.  With a black independent candidate in the race, the aide told me that they needed a Republican who could not get out of single digits to avoid “another Harold Washington situation” – a reference to Chicago’s first black mayor who won the all-important Democrat nomination because of a divided white vote.  City Hall’s internal polling indicated that I could possibly exceed 20 percent of the vote.

It is not just a Chicago problem.

In Colorado, an investigation by the local CBS affiliate revealed numerous people whose death did not prevent them from voting.  One woman died in 2009 but continued to cast ballots in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.

The Pennsylvania Secretary of State conceded that data indicated that more than 700 people had cast multiple votes in the 2016 election.  A cross check of data indicates that more than 40,000 voters had duplicate registrations in other communities or in other states.

Also in Pennsylvania, Democrat Secretary of State Pedro Cortes sent out 2.5 million voter application forms to unregistered voters, many of whom were legally ineligible to vote.  According to State Representative Daryl Megcalfe, that action potentially allowed thousands of ineligible citizens to vote.

In Philadelphia, the Public Interest Legal Foundation identified 86 non-citizens who voted since 2013.  The watchdog’s attorney, Joseph Vanderhulst said that “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

According to the NBC affiliate in Indiana, state police are in the midst of an investigation of vote fraud, stating that they “… believe there could be hundreds of fraudulent voter registration records with different combinations of made up names and addresses.”

In the Cuomo family’s back yard of New York, the State Department of Investigations (DOI) conducted a test in which ineligible voters were sent to 63 polling places in an attempt to vote.  In 97 percent of the cases, the applicant was allowed to vote.  So as not to affect the election and to establish evidence of the vote fraud, the ineligible voters wrote in “John Test.”  A New York newspaper called it “… a 21st Century survivor of Boss Tweed-Style politics” – referring to the Democrat political machine that ruled over the Big Apple for more than 150 years.

In 1984, following the 1983 election that put Chris Cuomo’s dad, Mario, into the governor’s mansion in New York State, a local grand jury reported on a “conspiracy” that resulted in the casting of thousands of fraudulent votes in local, state and congressional elections by the deceased, by former residents and by phony voters.  The grand jury recommended a statewide voter ID law, but that was rejected by state’s Democrat leaders.

In another registration test, this time in New Hampshire, a video was made of ballots being handed out to ineligible voters testing the system.  In this case, no ballots were actually cast.  In characteristic form, Democrat Governor John Lynch called for the prosecution of those exposing the corruption.

In one of the more bizarre cases, a 22-year-old white man in Washington, D.C. secured the ballot of a 62-year old black registered voter.  Had the young man actually cast the ballot, he would have misrepresented the older gentleman.  It is no small irony that the older man was none other than the nation’s chief opponent of voter ID – Attorney General Eric Holder.

A recent analysis of the Los Angeles voter rolls revealed that there are an astounding 42 percent more voters on the rolls than there are eligible voters.  Broward County, Florida also has more than 100 percent of the eligible voters on its rolls.  Los Angeles and Broward are only two of 140 major counties where the voter rolls exceed the number of eligible voters.  

The Eatonville, Florida mayor and two others have been indicted on vote fraud.  The Waverly, Virginia mayor faces dozens of charges of vote fraud. In Brooks County, Georgia, 12 officials have been indicted for vote fraud.  The first of several expected indictments has been handed down for vote fraud in Dallas, Texas.  An Illegal immigrant has been indicted for vote fraud in St. Louis, Missouri.   A man in Buffalo, New York has been indicted for vote fraud.  The mayor of Gordon, Texas, indicted for vote fraud.  And these are only a portion of the indictments handed down SINCE THE BEGINNING OF 2017.

The one thing we can expect from the President’s Commission with a degree of certainty is that they will be able to document millions of voting irregularities across the nation, putting to rest the outrageously false narrative personified and prolonged by CNN’s Chris Cuomo and his Democrat colleagues.  

What this commission will not and cannot do is to refute or substantiate President Trump’s belief that were it not for illegal voting he would have won the popular vote.  Right or wrong, the popular vote is chiseled into the granite of history.  What the Commission will do is to reveal the facts and recommend corrective actions – something every honest American should have no trouble supporting.

Larry Horist is a conservative activist with an extensive background in public policy and political issues. Clients of his consulting firm have included such conservative icons as Steve Forbes and Milton Friedman, and he has served as a consultant to the White House under Presidents Nixon and Reagan. He has testified as an expert witness before numerous legislative bodies, including the U. S. Congress and lectured at Harvard University, Northwestern University, Florida Atlantic University, Knox College and Hope College. An award winning debater, his insightful and sometimes controversial commentaries appear frequently on the editorial pages of newspapers across the nation. He can be reached at lph@thomasandjoyce.com.