Unbelievable...dead people voting in Michigan...it's clear we've got a problem, we have the technology, we have the resources...now we just need the will to do what is necessary to insure fair and honest elections...and we could make the process faster.
We have had various versions of what is referred to as "photo id" tossed back and forth in Michigan over the years. For nearly a decade we have had a law in Michigan requiring voters to show a state-issued photo ID. Problem is, that law was "set aside" by a highly suspect and partisan ruling from a Democrat attorney general back in 1997. Using drivers licenses or state issued id's as voter cards makes perfect sense, and disenfranchises no one. It's the best and easiest way to insure "real, live people" vote. The only ones with reason to complain are the ones who have something to hide.
After the last Detroit's Mayors election, former Mayor Dennis Archer and candidate Freeman Hendrix joined the call for photo id's to help with the system. A national commission headed by former president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of state James Baker III have called for nationwide adoption of use of photo ID.
The overwhelming majority of folks have a drivers license, seniors get "free" state paid for id's, others could for about $5.00 cost get a state id....and the state could provide them at no cost to the citizens. This would insure no one is "disenfranchised" in anyway. There are federal funds that might even be available to help implement such a system.
As an added benefit, SOS Terri Lynn Land has suggested legislation to enact "electronic poll books" which would speed up the process at the polls. Some variation of photo id's with electronic strips on the back could be used right now...i.e. our drivers license.
Please read this front page Detroit News article:
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060226/METRO/602260301
In Michigan, even dead vote
From Holland to Detroit, votes were cast by 132 dead people; Detroit's voting records are riddled with inaccuracies, casting doubt on elections' integrity
Lisa M. Collins / The Detroit News
February 26, 2006
DETROIT -- Fred Douglas Henley would have been 75 years old when the city of Detroit says he walked into a polling precinct and voted on Nov. 8. Henley, however, died the day before the election, and his voting address long has been vacant and boarded up.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060226/METRO/602260301
In Mich., even dead vote
From Holland to Detroit, votes were cast by 132 dead people; Detroit's voting records are riddled with inaccuracies, casting doubt on elections' integrity
Lisa M. Collins / The Detroit News
February 26, 2006
DETROIT -- Fred Douglas Henley would have been 75 years old when the city of Detroit says he walked into a polling precinct and voted on Nov. 8. Henley, however, died the day before the election, and his voting address long has been vacant and boarded up.
Blanche Credit died in 2003. But she's recorded as voting in November, too.
Then there's Michael Hollingsworth, whom the Detroit Department of Elections says voted at his precinct despite serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. And Jennifer Pinkerton is recorded as voting, but she lives in Westland.
It's impossible to say whether Henley, Credit, Hollingsworth and Pinkerton are names used by someone to cast fraudulent votes or whether they simply represent clerical errors. But a Detroit News review of voter and registration files, criminal and death records shows that Detroit's election records are so plagued with mistakes and inconsistencies -- including voter registry rolls packed with as many as 20,000 dead people and roughly 100,000 wrong addresses -- that the overall integrity of Detroit elections is in question.
Detroit, experts say, may be a worst-case example of tainted election records. But the city isn't alone. Across Michigan, 132 people were listed as having voted in November's local elections although they had recently died, says Mark Grebner, whose company, Practical Political Consulting in East Lansing, analyzes voter rolls. About 26 of those were in Detroit, which held by far the largest election, Grebner said.
Problems such as these have prompted Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land to call for major statewide election reform in Michigan, including purging faulty voter rolls in virtually every jurisdiction.
The News' analysis of the city's Nov. 8 election found:
Among the most common mistakes occur when election workers record a vote under a similar name, or confuse voters with their parents or other relatives.
The News did not review every vote cast, but instead targeted voter records based on several factors, such as the voter's birth year or voting history. Though limited and somewhat random searches were done, each search found voting records in error or highlighted names of voters who in fact could not have voted.
Difficulties in city record-keeping are compounded by the fact that many Detroiters are transient, and many do not have driver's licenses, making data hard to verify. For instance, the city recorded Lawanda Danette Williams as having voted Nov. 8 from her address at 19936 Ilene St. Williams has moved several times since living there.
"I couldn't have voted in Detroit. I was living in Southfield," Williams said. "That house has been vacant since 2002."
Detroit's newly elected clerk, Janice Winfrey, says she's ordered her staff to purge at least 50,000 names from the voter rolls by March; she's targeting bogus addresses as well.
"We've got a lot of cleaning up to do," Winfrey said
Organized fraud isn't found
After years of research, Grebner and his partner, Alan Fox, have found roughly 350,000 outdated records in Detroit's voter rolls, including 20,000 names of deceased individuals and 50,000 names of people who have left Detroit. Grebner says another 30,000 entries in the system are duplicates: mainly, two spellings of the same name.
"That's worse than the average in the state by a considerable margin," he said. "And it allows for mismanaged elections and for the possibility of vote fraud because the records cannot be depended on. There are registrations for people that have died, for people that are living elsewhere, and that allows for situations where other people could vote with their names."
But Grebner says he's never found evidence of organized fraud in Detroit.
Winfrey says she's going to address the issue with aggressive training and recruitment of poll workers.
"Those in need financially may not be the best poll worker," Winfrey said. "We hope to find quality workers who want to be involved because of an intrinsic value, and not what they can get out of it."
Winfrey's new director of elections, Daniel Baxter, says cleaning the voter rolls is his first priority.
"We think if we can resolve the low-hanging-fruit issues, then one step at a time we can bring back the integrity of the process," Baxter said.
Although there's no proof of fraud, there have been numerous allegations of fraud and documented instances of violations of election law -- particularly relating to absentee ballots.
In October, The Detroit News reported how former Detroit City Clerk Jackie Currie hired election assistants to help people in hospitals, group homes and the elderly and infirm vote by absentee ballot -- sometimes in ways that appeared to violate restrictions on election workers helping disabled people mark ballots.
Subsequently, state election officials said they also observed similar apparent violations of state law.
Prompted by the stories, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a probe into the city's absentee ballot program, and Wayne County Chief Judge Mary Beth Kelly ordered the state of Michigan and two consultants to oversee the counting of absentee ballots for the November election.
The federal investigation continues, and the FBI retains possession of the city's absentee ballots and other documents, Winfrey said.
In addition to cleansing voter rolls statewide, Land's reforms also would clarify rules for the handling of absentee ballots by local election officials -- a direct result of irregularities uncovered in Detroit.
Winfrey's efforts are already taking effect. Grebner says he was "shocked" when reviewing the city's election data this month.
"I was startled at how much improvement I see," Grebner said. "There was so little obvious error in the file, it didn't look like Detroit."
Issue isn't Detroit's alone
Problems with voter rolls do not stop at Eight Mile. The city of Holland, population 30,000, recorded 11 deceased people as having voted in November's local election, Grebner says.
"That a city 1 percent the size of Detroit would actually have a bigger problem with dead people voting than Detroit did, that says something," Grebner said.
Holland City Clerk Jennifer French says she had no idea there was such a problem.
"I'm not aware of any of those issues," French said. "That would surprise me a lot."
Keeping names of the deceased and nonresidents on the rolls is the problem, for it allows votes to accidentally be marked in those names, Grebner says. But Land's spokeswoman, Kelly Chesney, says purging voter rolls is complicated by restrictive federal rules governing the removal of names from voter lists. Substantial mailings and notifications are required.
"It was set up to protect voters from disenfranchisement," Chesney said.
It's also costly, which is why the state last year began to reimburse local governments for the initial costs of mailing the federally required notices when names are deleted.
Absentee vote teams abound
Although there's no evidence of widespread ballot fraud, numerous prominent Detroiters who have run for office have reported being contacted by people who offered to deliver votes and other considerations for a price.
Former Mayor Dennis Archer and mayoral candidate Freman Hendrix, among others, have told The News that it is common practice in Detroit for political operatives to approach candidates and request money and postage stamps in exchange for delivering absentee ballots.
The Rev. Horace Sheffield, a Detroit political insider who has run for office, says that all Detroit candidates have "their cadre of troops who get absentee votes."
"I've run for public office, and I've had these people approach me," Sheffield said. "Politicians do whatever they can do to secure votes and that includes paying people who are known throughout our history to obtain votes."
While such activity in the past could have impacted several thousand absentee ballots, enough to influence a City Council race, the numbers are not great enough to affect a mayoral race; Kilpatrick won by some 14,000 votes.
"If (fraud) is happening, it's minuscule," said State Rep. Lamar Lemmons III, D-Detroit. Some credit Lemmons with winning the election for Kilpatrick with his team of neighborhood activists who targeted unlikely voters.
"There's no organized, orchestrated mass voter fraud going on in the city, as people would like to believe."
You can reach Lisa M. Collins at (313) 222-2072 or lcollins@detnews.com.
