In his book, STEALING ELECTIONS: HOW VOTER FRAUD THREATENS OUR DEMOCRACY, John Fund describes a haphazard, fraud-prone elections system that, he suggests, imperils the world's leading democracy. Fund is a columnist for the WALL STREET JOURNAL'S OpinionJournal.com
and has written on voter fraud and election irregularities for the last decade.
Mario Aburto Martinez, 23, suspected assassin of Mexican candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, is presented to the media at the Almoloya de Juarez high federal prison near Toluca, about 40 miles west of Mexico City, March 25, 1994. (AP photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The 1993 National Voter Registration Act, known as "Motor Voter Law," requires that anyone entering a government office to renew a driver's license or apply for welfare or unemployment compensation be offered a chance to register to vote, without identification or proof of citizenship. Mail-in voter registration is also permitted.
The result: a explosion of phantom and invalid registrations, from the comic -- an elephant at the San Diego Zoo -- to the lethal -- at least eight of the 19 World Trade Center hijackers were registered to vote. Illegal alien Mario Aburto Martinez, who assassinated Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, was registered to vote twice in San Pedro, California.
L: Alberto Russi, a 92 year-old vote broker, during a lunch break in the vote fraud trial. R: Residents of Parker Jewish Geriatric Institute line up to vote at the polling place inside the facility, set up because long-term residents felt that casting absentee ballots left them disconnected from the political process. (AP Photos/Bill Cooke, Kathy Willens)
The MIAMI HERALD won a Pulitizer Prize in 1999 for uncovering how "vote brokers" employed by candidate Xavier Suarez stole a 1988 mayoral election in Miami by tampering with 4,740 absentee ballots. Many were cast by homeless people who didn't live in the city and were paid $10 apiece and shuttled to the elections office in vans. In Texas, a cottage industry of get-out-the-vote organizers, also known as politiqueras, recruit the elderly and disabled to vote by mail. The practice increases the opportunity for harassment and manipulation of vulnerable populations.
