(Official Washington Examiner editorial, Feb. 28) Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election were false, but elections across the country are undermined far more often than the former president’s left-liberal media opponents admit. Sometimes there is outright fraud, and more often there is human error. The problem can be compounded by bad policies that leave the system vulnerable to abuse.
Consider recent stories from five different states. In New York, the Appellate Division of the state’s Supreme Court this month affirmed a ruling striking down a New York City law that would have let more than 800,000 noncitizens vote in municipal elections. This ruling reflects common sense and New York’s Constitution. The state’s charter insists that the privilege of voting for civil offices belongs only to those whose full allegiance is to the polity those offices serve. To do otherwise would dilute the views of actual citizens, perhaps to their detriment.
Delaware’s Superior Court invalidated recent laws that expanded early voting and allowed “permanent absentee status” for some of the state’s voters without regard for whether they otherwise would remain eligible for future elections. Under the invalidated law, a Delaware citizen could leave the state but keep requesting absentee ballots for years without proving current Delaware citizenship.
The court found “clear and convincing evidence” that this violated the Delaware Constitution because neither rampant early voting nor lax controls on absentee voting meet the requirement to “secure secrecy and the independence of the voter, preserve the freedom and purity of elections and prevent fraud, corruption and intimidation.”
The Delaware case was filed for a Delaware elections inspector by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a law firm dedicated to election integrity. The foundation is also trying to force other states to uphold their election laws by cleaning ineligible voters off their rolls…. [The full editorial is at this link.]
