How to Find and Eliminate Illegal Votes: An Election Handbook

Department.

CHAPTER ONE

WHAT ARE THE LAWS?

Identification Requirements

Prior to the enactment of the National Voter Registration Act in 1993 (NVRA or Motor Voter), states required the populace to register to vote in person, and they were required to provide identification.

California, on the other hand, had allowed voter registration by mail and did not require any form of ID for thirty years prior to Motor Voter. A gorilla at the Los Angeles Zoo was registered to vote, as was Jesus Christ in Santa Monica.

In 1993, President Clinton signed the National Voter Registration Act, (Motor Voter) which mandated the same California rules across the country. Motor Voter did not require a physical form of ID, but those wishing to vote were required to provide either their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on the application. If they had neither of these, they could present a utility bill showing their name at the registered address.

List Maintenance

The NVRA placed restrictions on county registrars. Under it, registrars were only allowed to remove a registration if a family member requested removal or if the registrar received returned mail. This is referred to as active list cleaning, as it requires an action to take place in order that the registration is moved from the active list to the inactive list.

In 2002, President George Bush signed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). It served to strengthen the registration cleaning process. Under HAVA, registrars now must perform some form of file maintenance at the start of an election year. Further, they must finish their clean up at least 90 days prior to a federal election.

In addition to the active list cleaning method, registrars are allowed to utilize the U.S. Post Office National Change of Address List. They must also send out a residency confirmation mailing prior to the election and use returned mail to place registrants on the inactive list.

Because California was not compliant by the deadlines set forth in HAVA, the Department of Justice established a Memorandum of Agreement with the Secretary of State. The MOA was inserted into the California Code of Regulations as administrative duties for the Secretary of State.

CHAPTER TWO

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

VOTE BROKERS

Those who find voter registrations that are not being used and create them illegally.

They are paid to cast votes for a specific candidate.

REGISTRAR

This is an appointed official who is responsible for elections and related administrative duties under the direction of the county Board of Supervisors.

HAVA

Help America Vote Act 2002

NVRA

National Voter Registration Act 1993

CEC

California Elections Code

CCR

California Code of Regulations

MOA

Memorandum of Agreement between the US Justice Department and the California Secretary of State (SOS)

GG14

Gubernatorial General Election 2014

GP14

Gubernatorial Primary Election 2014

PG12

Residential General Election 2012

PP12

Presidential Primary Election 2012

GG10

Gubernatorial General Election 2010

GP10

Gubernatorial Primary Election 2010

PG08

Presidential General Election 2008

PP08

Presidential Primary Election 2008

CHAPTER THREE

HOW VOTE BROKERS FIND AND CREATE

ILLEGAL REGISTRATIONS

OBTAINING VOTER REGISTRATION LISTS

It isn’t difficult to get access to a list of voters. In some states, it is available online as public information. In others, you need to have a political committee in place. You can form one with just two officers, a president, and a treasurer. You fill out the paperwork and wait to receive an ID number from the Secretary of State. Once you have the number, you can go to a county registrar and get a county list, or you can go to the Secretary of State and get a list of all of the registered voters in the state.

The list will come to you on a disk or online. When you order it, you can also ask for the voter history. This gives a person the information needed to be able to determine which people have not voted in a long time.

COMPARISON TOOLS

Vote brokers then take the registration list and compare it to two lists; the Social Security Death Index and the U.S. Postal National Change of Address List.

By comparing the registration list to the Social Security Death Index, you can find a person’s name, last known address, social security number, and birthdate. This is the only information needed to successfully register a new voter. Vote brokers can identity and pair recent deaths with active registrants. If the person’s name and birthdate match the place of death and it isn’t far from the area where the registrant lives, it is a pretty safe bet that this registrant is deceased and their vote is available for use.

When comparing the registration list to the U.S. Postal National Change of Address List, vote brokers can identify voters who have recently moved and have not yet registered at their new address.

USPS awards licenses to venders who will compare lists to those who have moved. The vender will give the client, who could be a vote broker, back a list of those persons who have moved for up to the past 45 months. Once this list is obtained, an illegal vote for persons who have moved and have not registered at another address within the same county can be obtained.

Once a list of available votes has been obtained, a vote broker then determines how many votes are needed in order to actually win the election for a particular candidate. One way to do this is by determining the margin of votes that separated the winner from the loser in previous elections. The number of votes needed to win the election can be calculated by looking at the votes obtained by the winning candidate in the same type of election for the past 3 years and then determining the average. For safety purposes, they usually add another ten percent to allow for new registrants.

When they have the estimated number of votes needed to win, it is necessary to add up how many votes are already available to use. If they do not have enough, they will need to add some.

ADDING ILLEGAL REGISTRATIONS

Registering more votes is much easier since the passage of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

Under this act, a registrar is not allowed to require a person to present any form of identification. The registrant writes the last 4 digits of their social security number or their driver’s license number on the application. If they do not have either of those, they may present a utility bill which proves they live at the address they are claiming.

The problem with this is that it is very easy to obtain the Social Security number and last known address of those who are deceased. One online search vehicle, Ancestry.com requires a membership and will then allow you to access as many records as you like. A copy of their search engine is below.

"Find Social Security Death Index Records in more than 14 billion genealogical records

Enter the person’s name to search for Social Security Death Index records.

Advanced Search Elvis Presley’s SSDI Record American Singer & Actor

Ancestry has more than 14 billion genealogical records

•1 billion death, birth and marriage records

•Social Security Death Index (SSDI) and other death records such as civil, church and cemetery records"

An SSDI record usually shows:

•- Social Security Number

•- Birth and death dates

The NVRA further mandates that registrations be permitted by mail. Illegal votes are being registered at places where people can live who do not have access to utility bills or mail that proves they live at their stated address. Such places are;

•shelters

•group homes

•Job Corp facilities

•nursing homes

•churches

•food banks

•rehabilitation centers

•halfway houses

•rescue missions

•college dormitories

•commercial buildings

•government buildings

•parks

•vacant lots

•vacant houses

The post office will not forward election mail, like sample and absentee ballots. However, if a mailing address is listed on the voter registration card, the registrar will mail ballots directly there. The mailing address can be in the county or out of it. It can be at a post office box, a private business or a vacant home. One can also list a mailing address with the post office and ask them to hold your mail for you to pick up. Many people do this because they travel a lot, have a big dog, keep their gate locked and for other reasons.

If a P.O. Box is being used to receive multiple ballots, the box owner will usually list a group home or shelter in order to make certain the business owner or post office manager expects a lot of ballots to arrive there. You can tell them they are for a shelter, business, college or an association. As of this writing, when some registrars are looking for duplicate registrations, they look at registration addresses, not mailing addresses. Below is a partial sample showing a number of people receiving ballots at one P.O. Box. This information was obtained by auditing the database from the California Secretary of State.

CHAPTER FOUR

ILLEGAL VOTING USING EXPIRED REGISTRATIONS

People are allowed to register to vote using just a utility bill, the last 4 digits of a social security number, or a driver’s license number. When a new voter registration is received, all of the answers are accepted on merit. Under federal law, a registrar is not allowed to ask to see any form of identification.

Contrary to what is often believed, voter registrations do expire if they are not used.

In California, the registrar must send a Residency Confirmation Mailing to every registered voter before the primary election in even years. If a person has not voted in the past two federal general elections, or any elections in between, and does not respond back to the registrar, their registration is moved from the active list to the inactive list. In doing so, the registrant will not receive any election materials, but they are still able to vote. If the registrant does vote while being on the inactive list, their registration is returned to active status.

If the registrant does not vote for another two years after receiving the notice, their registration is cancelled and they must re-register in order to vote.

Under federal law, a county registrar must send a Residency Confirmation Mailing to registrants who have not voted in two consecutive federal general elections or any elections in between. The same rules apply as above.

Registrants move, die or forget that they are registered and register again. When a registrant does not vote for an extended period of time (2 – 4 years) these registrations become a fertile ground for vote brokers. They can walk into a polling place or cast an absentee ballot and it goes virtually undetected. See the sample below.

METHOD

In order to find expired registrations, you must purchase the voter history along with the voter registration database from the registrar. You can then sort the data in Excel. (Los Angeles County is too large for Excel, so you will need to review it in parts.) You can sort by voter history by finding the null cells for the past two federal general election cycles.

When you find records wherein the person has not voted for an extended period of time, you should check the registrants clean-up history. Was this person ever sent a Residency Confirmation Card? How long ago was it sent? Did they respond to it and if so, what was the response.

LAWS

CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS CODE

18501. Any public official who knowingly violates any of the provisions of this chapter, and thereby aids in any way the illegal casting or attempting to cast a vote, or who connives to nullify any of the provisions of this chapter in order that fraud may be perpetrated, shall forever be disqualified from holding office in this state and upon conviction shall be sentenced to a state prison for16 months or two or three years.

NVRA 2 E (5) (i) PUBLIC DISCLOSURE OF VOTER REGISTRATION ACTIVITIES

(1) Each State shall maintain for at least 2 years and shall make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters, except to the extent that such records relate to a declination to register to vote or to the identity of a voter registration agency through which any particular voter is registered.

(2) The records maintained pursuant to paragraph (1) shall include lists of the names and addresses of all persons to whom notices described in subsection (d)(2) of this section are sent, and information concerning whether or not each such person has responded to the notice as of the date that inspection of the records is made.

CHAPTER FIVE

GHOST VOTERS

Ghost Voting is the practice of voting for someone else who has ceased voting for an extended period of time, usually two years or longer. It is also a term we use when we find a person living or working at an address who does not know the person who is using their address in order to vote.

In the chart below, you can see where registrants stopped voting from the gubernatorial primary election of 2010 through the presidential general election of 2012. They then voted in the gubernatorial general election of 2014.

In the charts below, the V shows that the person voted and the N shows that they did not vote. The letters and numbers above indicate in which election the vote was cast. For example, GG 14 represents the Gubernatorial General election in 2014. The GP 14 is the Gubernatorial Primary election of 2014. PG 12 is the Presidential General election of 2012 and the PP 12 shows data from the Presidential Primary election of 2012. Looking at the voting history in purple, you can see that these registrants did not vote for an extended period of time and then suddenly began voting again.

SAMPLE

In reviewing the above, it would be a natural conclusion to accept this pattern as one in which the voter simply became interested in a candidate or ballot measure which brought them back to the