Eligible voters only

By Published by The Editorial Board

Published: August 4, 2008

Who hasn’t heard the old joke, “vote early and vote often?” How about the one about dead people voting because someone took the time to copy their names off their tombstones?

Funny, right?

Wrong.

The integrity of our political system depends on the integrity of the voting process, and voting can’t be clean if the rolls are filled with names of people that have no legal right to vote.

Three young people have been charged with election fraud in Hampton. The three worked for the nonprofit Community Voters Project, which is affiliated with the Boston-based Fund for the Public Interest, The Associated Press reported.

“They literally went to phonebooks,” said Nancy Rodrigues, secretary of the State Board of Elections. Rodrigues said the three were paid to sign up 15 new voters per day. When they couldn’t hit the quota, they apparently used real names from the phonebook with bogus Social Security numbers and dates of birth.

This is an issue of community concern because at least two groups have worked in the Dan River Region this year to sign up new voters. How can we be sure those new voters have a legal right to cast a ballot in a Virginia election?

“There are safeguards in place,” Rodrigues said. “Everything is checked against our voter registration system. There are lots of indicators for us.”

No matter who fills out or brings in a Virginia voter registration form, the name and other personal information is checked by local registrars against a database updated by the Department of Health (which tracks Virginians who have died), the Virginia State Police (which keeps up with felons) and even the DMV (for non-citizens). Those local registrars are supervised by a board made up of representatives of both major political parties. The local electoral board members are appointed by the local circuit court judge.

If the local voter registrar suspects a fraudulent registration form, they are required to turn the case over to the local commonwealth’s attorney; that’s what happened in the Hampton case, Rodrigues said.

“The way Virginia runs elections is the way Thomas Jefferson designed them,” Rodrigues said of the local control. “I am 100 percent confident. I’m here to tell you that we have safeguards built in.”

Those safeguards didn’t appear to convince Delegate Jeff Frederick, the recently named chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia.

“This is a very serious and troubling trend that we are seeing in Virginia,” Frederick said in a news release last Monday. “Laws are being broken and Virginians have to wonder if there is a deliberate effort underway to corrupt and affect the outcome of November’s elections. I urge the governor and attorney general to take immediate action to investigate these matters.”

Going to the governor and the attorney general isn’t the procedure, but we agree with Frederick that these cases are serious.

For that matter, the validity of every voter registration form is a serious matter.

But the arrests in Hampton are proof that the system is working. Frederick — like every Republican — knows that Democratic candidates and Democratic-leaning interest groups are signing up scores of new voters this year. That’s part of the reason normally red Virginia could go for Barack Obama in November.

Virginia already protects the integrity of its elections. Rather than call for an investigation, Frederick should be praising a system that worked.