Election fraud in Connecticut?

There's a story on FoxNews (online) today that reports votes being cast in the name of dead persons in the state of Connecticut. Here's the original article from the Hartford Courant. The Courant article is worth reading in its entirety.

The FoxNews report is already causing a buzz (among Republicans) and inspiring rebuzzals (from Dems), for example the CT Sec. of State Susan Bysiewicz is raising clucks by adamantly asserting that no evidence of election fraud has surfaced. But I suspect most stories/commentaries on the issue will miss the important point: some very simple changes in our system would greatly reduce the electoral system's vulnerability to fraud.

First, it is significant to remember that this investigation only involved a SAMPLING of databases in Connecticut, so don't draw too many conclusions from the relatively low numbers. The actual data supporting sloppiness are very likely higher, and as demonstrated in a recent news story (my friends at People for ("the American Way") inform me that one of their candidates--unfortunately named Kevin Killer, won his SD primary race by only 5 votes) races are often won by small margins.

Second, the story here is that Connecticut's electoral system is so sloppy. In reality, every state's electoral system is sloppy, but that doesn't mean that we can't take common sense steps to make the system less vulnerable to fraud.

From the Courant article:

The potential for fraud is most serious in municipal elections, when officials are not required to check photo identification at the polls and voters need only sign a statement attesting to their identity.

. . . .

Registrars tend to rely on newspaper obituaries, relatives, or word of mouth to learn of someone's death, many officials said.

Even then, registrars are advised to be extremely cautious about purging dead people from voter rolls, said George Cody, president of the Registrar of Voters Association of Connecticut and New Canaan's Democratic registrar.

In sum:

[Asst. Prof] Dufresne said there is no evidence of any election fraud, but the number of dead voters “shows the system is vulnerable and it shows that people who are clever and have a little cooperation in the town level, you could use this and get people to vote for people who died.”

(The prof said something similar in the Norwich Bulletin: "The investigation was not about fraud,” [Journalism Prof] Dufresne said. “It was about a lot of flaws in the system in town halls and at the state level. It is an inaccurate system.”)

So, it's not news (to most people) that bureaucracies, in general, are inefficient or that election systems, in particular, are vulnerable to abuse . . . so what is the simplest way to avert election fraud?

Dems have for a couple of years been alleging that elections are being stolen (as opposed to lost) because the CEO of Diebold once raised money for a Republican . . . or because some Berkeley Computer whiz was able to break into a poll machine in under 3 minutes and tamper with voting tallies. On the other hand, Liberals weep and gnash their teeth about attempts to purge databases of felons or dead people, when the truth is that "provisional ballots" make certain that all persons are allowed to cast a ballot and will have their vote counted--if upon post-election investigation the ballot is found to be legitimate and if including such contested ballots is necessary for determining a winner.

But all the while, Liberals and Democrat officials oppose--tooth and nail, merely requiring proof that a person is who s/he claims to be when showing up to cast a ballot?

One final point about the Courant article is that digging deeper into the facts on this report--like digging deep into a lot of such reports, appears to have turned up . . . nothing. Too bad Liberal election conspiracy theorists rarely if ever take the time to do the necessary investigation before demagoguing the vote fraud issue.