No Sanctions for Voting Twice

The Rhino Times ^ | November 14th, 2013 | BY JOHN HAMMER

[wbill]

If you have ever thought about voting twice, you might want to give it a try because unlike some crimes that the government takes seriously – such as speeding or parking for 35 minutes in a 30 minute zone – there is no penalty for voting illegally. At least no penalty that is enforced, even if you are caught.

Imagine being pulled over by a police officer who says, “I clocked you going 100 mph in a 35 mph zone, but don’t worry, we are not going to give you a ticket. I just want you to understand that in the future you shouldn’t drive so fast.”

That’s pretty much what happens if you get caught voting twice, like Fahiym Hanna did in the municipal election. Hanna voted the first day of early voting and voted again on Election Day.

Hanna is, according to his website, a political activist who has worked for the United Food and Commercial Workers, ran the election campaign for state Rep. Marcus Brandon and is president of the Greater Glenwood Neighborhood Association. In other words, he should know something about how the election process works.

He should not have been allowed to vote on Election Day, but he was. The Board of Elections couldn’t do anything about the vote he cast on Election Day, but it could retrieve and cancel the vote he cast during early voting, which the board voted unanimously to do.

Guilford County Elections Director Charlie Collicutt told the Board of Elections that he called Hanna to ascertain if he had voted twice or whether someone voted using his name. He said that often in cases where they think a voter voted twice it turns out to be a father and son with the same name. Collicutt told the board that Hanna admitted voting twice but said that he thought the early vote he cast was in the primary, and then he voted in the general election on Election Day.

It seems like someone who, according to his website, has run a campaign for a state representative and been involved in the election process should know the difference between the primary and the general election.

Whether Hanna did or didn’t doesn’t matter because there will be no sanctions against him. No charges will be brought and nothing will happen, although voting twice in one election is a felony under North Carolina law.

So if your parking meter expires, you get fined $15, but if you vote twice, which is a felony, nothing happens. It is incredible that the Board of Elections and the district attorney don’t take voter fraud more seriously.

There is another aspect to this entire situation that you might want to consider – if you vote early your ballot is not secret. If needed, the government can see who you voted for in every race and can cancel your vote as they did for Hanna. Who knows, the National Security Agency (NSA) may have a file on how people who vote early voted. The NSA seems to have everything else.

If you completely trust the government then there is nothing to worry about. But if you don’t want anyone to know who you’re voting for, then don’t vote early, or by absentee ballot. An early vote is essentially an absentee ballot and the vote can be retrieved by the system. Being retrieved by the system means elections officials have the ability to go back and see exactly how you voted, and this is true of all ballots cast early.

Ballots cast on Election Day are secret. Once the ballot is cast the election officials have no way to go back to the machine and figure out how an individual voted. The Board of Elections could not cancel the vote that Hanna cast on Election Day because they had no way to retrieve the ballot, but the early vote they could. So even though Hanna voted twice, which is a felony, he got to vote once in the election just like everyone who obeyed the law.

Chairman of Guilford County Board of Elections Kathryn Lindley said that in the past the board has referred those who voted twice to the Guilford County district attorney’s office, but the district attorney had declined to prosecute. So this time they decided not to bother going through the motions.

In this case presenting valid identification, as will be required in the next election, would not have made a difference because Hanna voted under his own name both times. Looking at it one way, the system worked: Hanna voted twice but he was caught and one of his votes was removed from the totals. But it also demonstrates huge flaws in the system because, although voting is taken seriously, there are essentially no sanctions for abusing the system and no one is telling people who choose to vote early that they are not casting secret ballots.

In another situation, the Board of Elections, made up of Lindley and members Don Wendelken and Dot Kearns, has been struggling with the law that requires absentee ballots cast by mail be postmarked by Election Day, in this case Nov. 5. The Greensboro post office, as anyone who deals with mail knows, doesn’t bother to postmark mail much of the time. The law requires that the ballots cast by mail be postmarked Election Day or earlier and arrive before Friday, Nov. 8.

Two ballots that arrived on Election Day clearly were cast before the election but were not postmarked. Votes that arrived earlier and were not postmarked were taken back to the post office by election officials and postmarked. But since the law requires that they be postmarked by Election Day, those that arrive on Election Day or after and are not postmarked, by state law, are not supposed to be counted.

The board decided that the two ballots that arrived on Election Day were obviously mailed before the election, although through no fault of the voter were not postmarked. The board unanimously decided to count those ballots.

For the two ballots that arrived on Nov. 6 with no postmark, both Lindley and Kearns said that they had to have been mailed by Nov. 5 to arrive on Nov. 6 and voted to count them. Wendelken voted against counting the two ballots that arrived on Nov. 6 with no postmark. Those votes were counted based on the 2-to-1 vote of the board.

With the provisional ballots, cast by registered voters who showed up at the wrong precinct, the board followed the recommendation of the staff and counted them in whole or in part depending on whether the precinct where the vote was cast was in the council district in which the voter now lived.

When you consider how carefully the board considers each provisional or questionable absentee ballot, it becomes even more shocking that there is no sanction for a voter who voted twice in the election. At the very least they should be hauled before a judge to explain their actions. Instead Hanna just got a call from the elections director who ascertained that he did indeed vote twice and that was it.

The good news is that in the first election run by Collicutt, all the votes were counted correctly on election night and there were no unusual issues.

Now the vote totals are official, with small changes due to provisional and questionable absentee ballots being added to the totals.

The only really close race was between District 1 Councilmember Dianne Bellamy-Small and now Councilmember-elect Sharon Hightower. In the official count Hightower won with 2,656 votes to 2,644 for Bellamy-Small. The election night totals had Hightower winning by 15 votes, but Bellamy-Small made up three votes with the provisional ballots and absentee ballots that were not postmarked.

[wbill]

Nope, no voter fraud here. And certainly, we don't need Voter ID or other laws that toughen things up.

"Rhino Times" is the local conservative paper. They do a good job of keeping both sides on the straight and narrow.

[kevkrom]

It’s funny, don’t you think, that the people who usually get caught being “confused” or making “honest mistakes” about voting almost invariably turn out to be directly involved with a political campaign.

[wbill]

Note the name, too.

"I was confused, I'm not from around here!" or "What are you, some sort of racist?" make for excellent defenses.

[pallis]

And they usually turn out to be Democrats.

[I want the USA back]

Because it’s only dems who vote twice, or after they’re dead. But when normal people try to enforce the laws, they’re branded racist.

[huldah1776]

My statistics professor could come up with a formula to correct for these errors, and of course, could do the opposite and add even more. Take your pick.