Stamping Out Melrose Voter Fraud

(MELROSE, MA) An alert citizen has called attention to the menace to democracy known as voter fraud, citing reports of almost 900 cases of voter fraud in the United States since 2000, an astonishing SEVENTY cases per year.

Voterfraudfacts.com reports that between 2000 and 2010 over 649 million votes were cast in general elections and saw thirteen cases of in-person voter impersonation.

But the problem of absentee ballot fraud is documented, even in the cradle of liberty. "Rep. Stephen Smith, 57, of Everett, Mass. will plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of deprivation of rights. Smith, who represents the 28th Middlesex District in Massachusetts, allegedly cast invalid absentee ballots for voters who were ineligible or unaware of ballots being cast in their names."

Every vote counts. In the November 2012 Presidential election, President Barack Obama carried the great state of Florida by 73,189 votes. Had each of those 891 alleged fraudulent voters been teleported to Florida during the 2012 election, and had their vote properly rescinded, Obama's victory would have fallen by about (891/8397351) a truly frightening .01 percent. Nevertheless the psychological impact of that swing would clearly boost GOP morale for 2016 and potentially provide a lifeline to the candidacy of Senator Marco Rubio.

Faux News reported the well-known fact that voter fraud is entirely a Democratic party phenomenon. But in fact, Colin Small, a low level GOP operative allegedly witnessed discarding voter registration forms in Pennsylvania recently had felony counts dropped against him, but numerous pesky misdemeanor charges persist.  

Roxanne Rubin, a Nevada Republican accepted a plea deal in January after being discovered trying to vote twice in the 2012 Presidential election.

When asked whether the lack of any reports of voter fraud in Melrose mattered, Assistant Deputy City Elections Supervisor Poindexter Cabot said, "that doesn't matter. A citizen is concerned about voter fraud and we won't stand for even the possibility. And no, there are no potholes in Melrose, either."

Harvard professor Alexander Keyssar writes in Harvard Magazine, "The devil is in the details—as is always true with laws that tap the tension between election integrity and access to the ballot box. Like many critics of the recent legislation, I could welcome a photo ID requirement—if it were made clear that it was the responsibility of the state (rather than of private citizens) to insure that every eligible man and woman possessed such documentation." 

As always, Melrose won't accept any halfway technology in her commitment to accuracy. DNA technology has been excluded as invasive and impractical, despite its proven use in The Hunger Games. The city plans to implement iris biometric scanning as soon as it receives competitive bids. Storage and computer technology will subsequently be deployed at Melrose polling sites and polling place personnel trained as soon as possible. The city has no timetable in place to arrange for Melrose's thousands of registered voters to have their no-touch iris scanning.

When asked about the time and cost relative to the magnitude of the problem, Cabot remarked, "there's simply no price that we won't bear to get it right. Thank the Lord we're aware of this scourge. If only Whitey Bulger had committed voter fraud, he'd have been locked up long ago."