Is North Dakota Susceptible To Voter Fraud?
In Montana, Secretary of State Linda McCulloch is dismissive of the notion of voter fraud. She says that critics point to mere “anecdotes” and offer no real evidence that it’s happening.
But according to this report from Montana Watchdog, voter fraud in Montana would be pretty easy in that state:
Though McCulloch provides an ironclad guarantee that voter fraud never occurs within state borders, a different election official on Tuesday told Watchdog.org that the fraud-by-absentee-ballot process demonstrated in O’Keefe’s video is theoretically possible in Montana.
Yellowstone County elections administrator Bret Rutherford said in a phone interview the scenario’s depicted in O’Keefe’s videos are entirely conceivable in Montana — though he’s skeptical violations of that nature occur.
Two plausible circumstances exist that could lead to voter fraud involving Montana. An out-of-state resident, like a snowbird or college student, moves to Montana while maintaining another address elsewhere. That person could request an absentee ballot from the previous state while simultaneously registering to vote in Montana.
Sure, the elections offices typically ask for a previous address to notify the other state, but new residents can still register without putting down their alternative information.
The same can also happen in reverse: A Montana student could leave the state, register elsewhere while keeping a parent’s address and still request an absentee ballot through the mail.
Montana would have absolutely no way of detecting the malfeasance.
North Dakota, which doesn’t have voter registration, would be just as susceptible to this problem. It would be very easy for the large numbers of out-of-state college students attending classes on the state’s 11 college campuses to both vote in their home states and claim residency in North Dakota under our loose citizenship laws (you need only live in the state for 30 days) and cast another ballot here.
Is this happening? Opponents of election law reforms will claim there’s no evidence, but then nobody is exactly looking for evidence either. There is very little, if anything, done to verify that voters are casting valid ballots.
Tags: linda mcculloch, montana, North Dakota News, vote fraud
