Election Officials Sending Dead People, Non-Residents, Non-Citizens "Live" Ballots
This dangerous for for election integrity, and individuals who could be held criminally liable for being defrauded.
My wife and I got our ballots in the mail for the 2024 November elections this past week. Our son’s ballot also arrived. The problem with that is my son moved to Washington State over a year ago, re-registered to vote out there, and I personally told our local election officials about his move the last time I voted and noticed his name was still on the checklist -- over six months ago.
That’s at least two supposed safeguards that were breached. We’re told that when someone re-registers to vote in another state Vermont is alerted, and the voter is removed from our statewide checklist. Either Washington didn’t notify Vermont, or Vermont didn’t do anything about it when they did. Then, when I told election officials my son had moved, they should have at least listed him as “challenged” and not mailed a ballot to him, if they did not remove him from the checklist immediately. Again, nothing happened.
Elsewhere, a friend shared a photo of a ballot that landed in his mailbox for a woman who no longer lived there. In fact, she no longer lived period. A quick search of her name turned up her obituary, published two years ago.
In an online discussion about this incident, another woman chimed in to say that she had received two ballots in the mail, one under her maiden name and a second under her married name.
Another friend shared an extremely distressing story about how their spouse, who is a legal resident but not a US citizen, received a ballot in the mail despite, knowing the law, never having attempted to register to vote. As they look into how this could have happened, so far, the most likely explanation appears to be an error at the Department of Motor Vehicles when this person renewed their driver’s license.
So, just here in a weekend’s worth of casual conversation we have examples of non-residents receiving live ballots, dead people receiving live ballots, some citizens receiving multiple live ballots, and non-citizens being allowed to register to vote (and at least in this case not even aware it’s happening) and being sent live ballots. As I write this article someone literally just called into WVMT’s Morning Drive to say they’d received someone else’ ballot in their mailbox. Delivered to the address on the envelope, but the addressee doesn’t live there.
Supporters of this chaos will say this is all just anecdotal. Yeah, but there are an awful lot of anecdotes out there! Emphasis on the word awful. So, is anyone in authority systematically looking into just how rampant these sorts of things are? No! Instead, we are constantly being gaslit that Vermont’s elections are not only just fine, they are the cleanest and most perfectest ever since going in on all mail all the time. This is observably false.
And it isn’t just dangerous to the integrity of our elections, which of course it is. If, for example, someone got hold of, fraudulently filled out, signed and plopped in a drop box my son’s Vermont ballot, and he votes legitimately in Washington, he could be in serious legal trouble for – as far as anyone in authority could tell – voting twice. That’s a felony. He could find himself in the undeserved position of having to defend himself from that charge, and what are the chances he could do so successfully? (Don’t worry, bud, I burned your ballot.)
If the ballot sent to that legal non-citizen resident who was erroneously registered to vote at the DMV were somehow cast in error or fraud, that poor person could be fined, spend time in prison, and/or face deportation and loss of legal residency status. So, yeah, serious consequences for real people as a result of this negligently insecure election system we have set up. Not just negligently insecure in how we send and cast ballots, but negligently insecure in how we register people to vote in the first place.
It is inexcusable that in Vermont we have zero tools to identify if and when these types of fraud occur, let alone the ability to trace them back to who perpetrated the crimes, and prosecute them.
Proponents of this sieve of a system argue that any level of responsibility placed on the voter for verifying who they are and that they are actually a resident of the place they’re attempting to vote is a form of disenfranchisement. But there are two ways I can disenfranchise you as a voter. One is to somehow stop you from casting your legitimate ballot. The other is to cancel out your legitimate vote by casting a fraudulent one. And with all these unclaimed, unwanted “live” ballots floating around our countryside, it is really, really, really easy to do the latter in Vermont, and it is virtually undetectable.
Other states that do all vote by mail at least have some form of voter ID requirement – signature check, or a requirement to provide a government ID number when submitting a ballot. Something! Vermont has nothing! The only “check” we have is, “Hey, this is Vermont. The clerks know everybody!” Well, clearly the clerks don’t always know when somebody moves, somebody dies, somebody gets married. That’s not their fault. They’re human. Our election laws should account for that, but they don’t. And that, IMHO, is totally unacceptable.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.
Event Notes: Rob Roper will be speaking on Tues, Oct 8, 6:00 pm in Londonderry, Londonderry Town Hall, 139 Middletown Road, on “The Policies Making Vermont Unaffordable: A Look at what what Montpelier has been up to and has in store for VT taxpayers.”
Media Notes: Rob Roper will be on WDEV’s Vermont Edition on Wed, Oct 9, 10:00 am. AM 550, FM 96.1 | 96.5 | 98.3 | 101.9, or Live Streaming.
Agree with the thrust of Rob’s article, where having no interest in the legal casting/counting of ballots creates cynicism of the outcomes and a breeding ground for conspiracy theories that unfortunately gain traction. But for Vt due to the predominance of low information voters, one can confidently predict that Harris will get 70% of the votes and Trump will get 30% so ballot irregularities are irrelevant when the vote is so lopsided.. The problem comes in down ballot races where counts can be much closer and the problems Rob discusses will have real impacts sure to cause a lot of acrimony.
In 1998 our son decided to return to college for an advanced degree. He needed 21 hours of higher math. He found he could, as a New York State resident, get the relevant courses at State University of NY at Albany for many thousands of dollars less than at UVM. He moved to Schenectady and followed all instruction to qualify for NY instate tuition. He rented an apartment, registered his car in NY, had his auto insurance reissued for a NY address, registered in Schenectady County to vote, obtained a Schenectady telephone number, and filed a preliminary NY income tax. We informed our town clerk here in Lamoille County. But his name was still on the checklist that Fall. I wrote a note: I was informed by the Board of Civil Authority that a name would only be removed when the County Registrar in New York filed a notarized certificate of his registration in New York. Since the Post Office and the NY Registrar all charge actual cash for those transactions, nothing was done. My town clerk told me not to worry, his name would be purged after five years of not casting a ballot. Knowing how many students get added to checklists at college registration drives, knowing that all those ghost names will hang on for 5 years was not comforting.