FROM OUR PRINTED AUGUST 2020 EDITION
by Charles T. Heberle III
President, The Citizenship Project
I had an experience in the 2012 election which bears repeating as it is instructive. I was a poll watcher in my hometown of Gloucester. As the only one in my sub-precinct, I felt obligated to stay all 12 hours and have my friends bring me lunch and spell me for breaks. That brought on an eye-opening experience which I know is repeated all over Gloucester and I suspect every town and city in Massachusetts.
As the day wore on I saw a number of young people in their twenties come through more than once. When one of my buddies was there we checked the address he was voting for. It turned out to be a vacant house. Further research disclosed that many of the multiple houses that these young people voted from were from residences where the occupants had not voted in years. Then I saw four couples come in from the same family all registered to the same address. I knew that address. I had dated their aunt while I was in high school. There is no way that four families can fit in that house. Very likely they all register at each other’s houses and vote in four different towns/cities. I asked the election supervisor afterwards if there was any way to check this. He said yes there was a state computer that was supposed to check for duplicate voting. But how does it do that without voter ID?
Lastly, a little story about voter fraud in Washington State. In the ’90s I lived there and one election I saw a young couple come into the polling place while I was there and claim that they had never mailed in their mail-in ballot. They let them vote in person. Later I asked the county clerk, who was a member of our Rotary Club, how she checked on these things. She said, “We don’t. I don’t get any extra money or personnel at election time. I can’t do that given the crush of counting along with normal business. I don’t have enough people to do that.” How many other county/town/city clerks have the same situation?
There are organizations who work with people to clean up voter rolls and check for fraud before the election. I think we should put some of our rank and file people on this in every town and city in the commonwealth to help with this problem. If we are ever to be a viable Party in Massachusetts, we need to break the systemic problem of voter fraud that keeps the Dems in power. ♦
