The Independent View: The Other Side of Voter Fraud

A recent nationwide analysis of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases since 2000 found only 10 instances of in-person fraud. So were is the bulk of fraud coming from that calls into question the integrity of the vote?

It is coming from candidates, their campaigns, and Board of Elections' staff.

So the current state's new voter ID laws, the most frequently proposed measure to combat voter fraud, wouldn't have done anything to prevent the voter fraud that is coming before the courts.

Here are some examples:

In the midst of his 2012 GOP primary campaign for a Massachusetts state House seat, Jack Villamaino changed the party affiliation of nearly 300 people in his town of East Longmeadow. Days later, the same number of absentee ballot requests were dropped off at the town clerk’s office, a list that was almost a “name-for-name match” for those whose registration information Villamaino had altered.

Villamaino pleaded guilty to felony charges of stealing ballots and changing the party affiliation of 280 Democrats during his campaign for state representative. A judge sentenced him to a year in jail, only four months of which he'll be forced to serve behind bars.

The remainder of that sentence will be suspended, and Villamaino will also be required to serve a year of probation. Villamaino's defense attorney had hoped the judge would throw out the felony conviction, while Hampden District Attorney Mark Mastroianni had sought additional felony charges for forgery and perjury.

Villamaino, a former East Longmeadow Board of Selectmen chairman who resigned last year amid the scandal, ultimately lost his Republican primary, and the GOP candidate subsequently lost to the Democrat in the race.

His wife, Courtney Llewellyn, is also facing charges stemming from the scandal, though she has pleaded not guilty and will appear in court later this month.

A conservative judge sentenced Ohio Democratic poll worker Melowese Richardson to five years in prison for illegal voting. She was found guilty of having voted for her sister who was in a coma, as well as for herself, in 2012 and in previous elections.

Colin Small, a young Republican who threw voter registration forms from voters for other parties into a dumpster before the 2012 elections, ended without any legal consequences.

In 2008, the Indiana petition requirement for the Democratic Presidential Primary was 4,500 signatures and at least 500 signatures had to come from the nine U.S. House districts in the state. On April 25, 2013 an Indiana jury convicted two individuals, one the Democratic Party Chairman and the other a Board of Election official, of forging signatures on the Democratic Presidential Primary petition for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Without the fraudulent signatures, neither Clinton nor Obama would have had enough valid signatures in the Second District, so their statewide petitions would have failed. The fraud was committed by four individuals. Two pleaded guilty and their testimony was used to convict the other two.

Let us know about cases you found in your state.