Q&A of the Day – Will there be voter fraud in Florida this year?
Each day I’ll feature a listener question that’s been submitted by one of these methods.
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Today’s entry: Did you know that FIVE counties in Colorado, one county in Michigan, and SEVEN counties in Florida have over 100% voter registration? That means that a swing state has FIVE counties where there are more registered voters than there are qualified individuals over the age of 18! That doesn’t include the dozen additional counties with voter registration rates above 90%!
Bottom Line: This comes courtesy of the most recent findings from the Honest Elections Project. There’s also a new lawsuit in Pittsburgh due to their findings along with work from the Heritage Foundation. As I’ve often discussed the most pervasive form of bias in news media is omitting information. That’s generally the case because most Floridians aren’t aware that voter fraud isn’t just a potential issue, it’s an ongoing problem that’s led to voter fraud convictions cycle after cycle. There were three criminal convictions for voter fraud in Florida stemming from the 2015-2016 cycle. Two convictions were for fraudulent use of absentee ballots and the third was altering the vote count. Two convictions were due to violations in Orange County, the other in Miami-Dade. Two were in favor of Democrats and one in favor of Republicans. Notice that we didn’t have any convictions in Broward or Palm Beach County – where we’ve of course had our biggest election related issues over the years.
When it comes to voter fraud and potential voter fraud the reality, as is illustrated in the three convictions I referenced, is this... Voter fraud isn’t something a particular party has a monopoly on. Partisans from both sides seem to have the feeling the other side cheats the most. That may or may not be true. We only know what’s prosecuted. The Honest Election Project sent a letter demanding a reconciling of voter rolls in Colorado, Florida and Michigan last week. Here’s the good news. It’s likely about to happen in Florida, and thirty states regardless of legal action.
The use of the ERIC, or the Electronic Registration Information Center, is about to kick in for the thirty states currently signed up for it. In fact, the three states referenced – Colorado, Michigan and Florida are all in the ERIC initiative to reconcile voter rolls across all participating states by comparing names, addresses, date-of-birth and last four digits of Social Security numbers. Add in the new election’s supervisors in Broward and Palm Beach Counties and I’m more confident about fair elections in Florida, and much of the country, than I’ve been in recent cycles. When it comes to voter fraud, we don’t know what we don’t know. The question is whether we’ve being proactive to address potential fraud and the answer is yes.