Linda McCulloch | Rockin' On The Right Side

There are so many things going haywire in our nation that you just can’t keep up with them all.

It’s like whack-a-mole. “Federal Land Grabs!” Bam! “Agenda 21!” Bam! “Election Fraud!” Bam! Bam! Bam! You can’t keep up – when you try to smack down one issue, two or three more pop up.

Yesterday a friend and I made a trip to our County Courthouse to meet the Clerk and Recorder and learn all about our old ES&S 570 tabulator (vote counting machine). We wanted to know exactly how this thing works and if there are any weaknesses or opportunities for hanky-panky. We were warmly greeted and our Clerk went out of her way to answer all of our questions. She even took time out of her busy day to give us a test drive.

The machine is a pretty clunky old gal, but understandable and serviceable. There are opportunities for people error, but the machine itself is pretty fool-proof as near as we could tell. However, our visit actually pointed us to an unexpected and much bigger problem – absentee ballots.

Our secretary of state, Linda McCulloch, insists “voter fraud is nonexistent in Montana“. If your local fire chief tells you “fires are nonexistent in my town”, you’d better start looking for a new fire chief. He not only may not see fires that do occur, he also doesn’t feel the need to prevent them. Great gig if you can get it.

The fact is, our absentee ballot system is a neon-flashing, irresistible invitation to any unscrupulous group wanting to control an election. Here’s why:

Every voting jurisdiction in Montana, and in most states, mails absentee ballots to out-of-state addresses. Many are sent to people who previously lived in the district. Some are college students who originally registered using their parents’ address. In any event, if someone is registered to vote in the district, all they have to do is request an absentee ballot, fill it out and sign it, and return it to the county clerk. As long as they keep voting, they remain registered at the last address on file and can continue voting forever, regardless of where their ballot is sent. They never have to set foot in the state.

I asked our clerk if they check to see if these out-of-state absentee voters are also registered to vote in other states. “No,” was the succinct reply.

How many votes in Montana elections are being placed by people who no longer live here? Or perhaps never did? How easy would it be for me to register to vote in Montana, using a fictitious name and/or address, and then ask for an absentee ballot to be sent to me in Newark, New Jersey? Using technology, why couldn’t I do this a thousand times or more?

It may sound like too much work for an amateur like you or me for just one vote. But elections are no longer just about choosing the right person for a local government office. There are huge government dollars at stake and deep pocket special-interest groups who will do and spend whatever it takes to throw an important election – think, for instance, Al Franken. And what’s the down-side if you get caught?

The only verification of absentee voters is a brief check of the signature on the envelope against the scanned signature on the registration at the secretary of state’s website. In our courthouse, whoever gets the mail performs this function. It is unsupervised and unscientific at best (I watched a small batch being checked-in and saw a very suspicious signature accepted.) I know there are many conscientious employees in our county offices, but if it’s a busy day, especially in a very large district, is this a step that might get skipped? Following up on a suspicious signature is tedious and time-consuming. Who would know the difference?

We all love the convenience of absentee voting, and its use is exploding all over the country. I maintain that vote fraud will explode right along with it unless we take one or two preventative steps:

stop mailing absentee ballots out of state
develop a nationwide registration system and cross-check registrations, similar to that built by True The Vote, a national voter integrity advocate group

I know my libertarian friends oppose national ID cards and related identification processes such as fingerprint and retina imaging, but this would be yet another perfect justification for their use.

This is not an indictment of our County Clerks and their employees. In our sparsely-populated, rural state, there is probably less election fraud than in populous areas. In larger cities, where ballots are handled in huge batches and nobody knows anybody else, and where votes are worth big money, it looks like easy money.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

This video of the Who in 2001 includes
bassist John Entwistle just before his death, and
Zak Starkey (Ringo’s son) on the drums –
sure looks like his Dad, but plays even better!

Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?

Who Are You – the Who

How incredibly irresponsible can an elected official be? Montana Secretary of State Linda McCulloch recently distributed an editorial saying, “Crying wolf about the security of Montana’s elections is an intentional and deliberate attempt to decrease voter turnout by gaining support for laws that will restrict your right to vote.”

The official Montana Secretary of State website lists McCulloch’s number one priority: “interpreting state election laws and overseeing elections.” Her job is to identify weaknesses in our voting system and take measures to prevent election fraud. She should be proudly and aggressively investigating complaints, auditing processes, and training personnel to protect the integrity of our votes.

Instead, she denies any responsibility. “The results are overwhelmingly clear. Voter fraud – votes knowingly cast by ineligible individuals – does not exist in Montana,” McCulloch wrote.

I think back to my first college job, busting my butt in Nelson’s tire shop in Great Falls on a cold November day, looking out at the long line of muddy, sloppy cars waiting for snow tire installation. I sure wish I could have said “It is overwhelmingly clear! There is no snow in Montana, so the need for snow tires does not exist!”

I would have been fired, and so should McCulloch. There IS snow in Montana, and there IS election fraud.

Last weekend a group of Tea Party leaders from around the state met in Helena for a planning session, and one of the hot topics was the escalating incidence of election fraud. One described how, in his small precinct, over 200 absentee ballots were mailed to out of state addresses! Since the returned ballots were hidden from poll watchers by officials, no one knows how many were accepted as valid by the county election officials.

Another related how a poll watcher friend saw and pointed out to the official that twelve consecutive ballots were signed by the same person with the same pen. The official blushed, and said “I’ll take care of this,” and removed the ballots to a back room, where nobody could see what ultimately happened to them.

A study of the 2008 Montana election results points out serious flaws in the Missoula County vote tabulator machine processes and the Montana Votes database.

While the absentee ballot is a great convenience, it is also an opportunity for easy election fraud. And McColloch’s equating the requirement for photo ID at the polls with “voter repression” is just asinine and disingenuous. There can be no other reason for denying this reasonable test of voter integrity than the accommodation of fraud.

This is not a partisan issue. Voters of all parties and persuasions should demand election integrity from their secretary of state. Linda McCulloch is not interested in fulfilling that number-one priority. If she doesn’t believe there is election fraud in Montana, she is fooling herself – and the voters.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Enjoy one of the all-time great live concert bands – Styx

You’re fooling yourself if you don’t believe it
You’re kidding yourself if you don’t believe it

Fooling Yourself – Styx