Dick Morris: Ghost Voters Keep Democrats in Office
Voters who have moved away and those who are deceased may provide a solid core of Democrat votes in many key states.
Because most states do not have efficient or effective ways of purging their voter rolls when people leave the area or pass away, the names stay on the rolls and afford a great opportunity — in the absence of photo IDs — for fraudulent ballots to be cast in their name.
States are limited in what they can do to ascertain who still lives at a voter’s address and who has moved because courts have ruled that doing so could intimidate minority voters.
For example, any requirement that a voter respond to a postcard to show he is still living in a residence has been treated by the courts as an impediment to voting that has a “chilling effect” on the exercise of the franchise.
But a study by Deroy Murdock, a Fox News contributor (no relation to Rupert) and an editor at National Review Online, reveals that there are 3,551,760 more registered voters than there are adults in certain counties throughout the nation.
In swing states, the number of “ghost voters” may be enough to swing the outcome.
Ghost Voters in Swing States
- Colorado: 159,373
- Florida: 100,782
- Iowa: 31,077
- Michigan: 225,235
- New Hampshire: 8,211
- North Carolina: 189,721
- Virginia: 89,979
2016 Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won Colorado by 136,386 votes and New Hampshire by 2,736 — both fewer than the number of ghost voters who could have backed her and tipped the balance.
President Donald Trump carried Michigan by 10,714 votes and North Carolina by 173,315 — again less than the number of ghosts.
Congress, the courts and the state legislatures must curb this danger to our democracy.
Congress should pass laws requiring states to clean their voter files before the next presidential election.
The courts should specify constitutional means for doing so and realize that when a ghost votes through fraud, he is depriving legal voters of the full meaning of their own franchise. And states, of course, need to act on their own to tighten the ghost-voter loophole.
Why don’t they?
Conservatives suspect it is because many liberals want the loophole to remain open so they can exploit it to win close elections.
But we must make them close it.
Dick Morris is a former adviser to President Bill Clinton as well as a political author, pollster and consultant. His most recent book, “Rogue Spooks,” was written with his wife, Eileen McGann.
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