As more details surface about the Bladen County election fraud scheme, it's increasingly clear just how vulnerable our election system is.
Buzzfeed published an interview with a man named Chris Eason - who says he has never voted. Ever. He says “I told him I’m not voting, I don’t vote. I don’t care who gets in there because whoever gets in there, they don’t help me.”
So, he's pretty adamant about not voting, right?
But records show SOMEONE is voting - using his name.
Eason told BuzzFeed News that he signed a blank absentee ballot in the now-contested Nov. 6 general election, didn’t actually pick any candidates, and then handed the unsealed ballot to the man at the center of an unfolding election fraud scandal, McCrae Dowless.
Sure enough, public records show, his absentee ballot ended up signed, sealed, and witnessed to the county Board of Elections with Eason’s name on it.
“That’s what I’m telling you — McCrae or whoever’s doing it, they checked them boxes, I didn’t,” said Eason. “I’d take a lie detector test on that.”
This is clearly fraud, even though Eason later admits that he willingly and knowingly gave his signed, unsealed, blank ballot to Dowless.
But then there was this part:
Though Chris Eason says he does not vote, there are votes recorded under his name for a hodgepodge of nine elections over the past decade, public records show.
In three elections, it indicates he or someone under his name appeared in person for early voting.
The other six were mail-in absentee ballots.
This is in-person vote fraud. This is what voter ID is meant to stop.
The only reason we know about this is because Eason came forward to explain his unwillingness to vote. If he doesn't go public and boast about his refusal to vote, we would never find out that someone voted in his name three times.
If you are fair-minded, this example should make it clear how easy it is to commit in-person fraud.
Opponents of voter ID will say, "That's only one person, Pete!"
And that is true.
Except there is no way to know how many other examples exist because the people who don't vote generally don't pull their own voter cards to ensure nobody is voting in their name. These voters don't care enough to vote, and don't care enough to check.
So, how can we determine whether the Dowless operation also engaged in-person fraud?
The only way would be to have someone involved in the operation blow the whistle or admit to their own illegal acts.
Which is a perfect example of how difficult it is to catch in-person fraud.
Pete's Prep Sheet: Friday, Dec. 7, 2018
- At the Daily Signal, Hans von Spakovsky notes how "Liberal pundits and activists, meanwhile, appear gripped by pure schadenfreude: Republicans cried fraud for years, they say, and now they supposedly have egg on their face because of the allegations in North Carolina. But as the Heritage database demonstrates, fraud is committed in elections by wrongdoers from all political parties." (Indeed, here's an Obama aide making that very dishonest claim, and a POLITICO piece parroting the same talking point.)
- If you think legacy media outlets and the personalities they employ seem to be overly fixated on President Trump, you're right. Real Clear Politics takes a look at how much of the news content is filtered through a prism of Trump. It's pretty amazing.
- North Carolina lawmakers adopted a set of recommendations on improving school safety, according to the News & Observer, that includes random screenings, giving teachers panic devices, civic responsibility education, trauma first aid, development of a system for mental health screening, expansion of school safety grants from $30 million to $53 million in 2019.
- In Mecklenburg County, the newly elected sheriff scrapped the 287(g) program that allows federal immigration officials to work with the local deputies to identify unauthorized immigrants that arrived at the jail for non-immigration offenses. ICE says the decision means it will step up enforcement actions.
- WLOS TV has a report on how Asheville Police is having a harder time solving crimes. It quotes a "representative with APD" as saying the number of calls for service has been growing, but there are not enough cops to handle it all.