Yesterday (11 May 2017) President Donald J. Trump set up a tragic, but long overdue, measure. Tragic because a President of the United States shouldn’t have to trouble himself with such things. President Trump set up a commission to investigate voter fraud in America. And it’s about time.

The voter fraud commission

The new commission calls itself the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The Washington Times and WorldNetDaily both describe it. Vice-President Mike Pence will lead it, with Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach as vice-chairman.

Voter fraud means anyone voting twice (or more), voting when he hasn’t the right, or voting in another’s name. The third part interests people most. Corrupt politicians have always cackled gleefully about “voting the cemetery.” For all the American people know, plenty of politicians do just that. They could also vote in the names of voters who have moved out. Or the voters themselves could have sample ballots forwarded to them from their old addresses. If they never tell the old State Division of Elections that they moved out, how are they to know? And many such divisions won’t even ask!

Donald Trump asserted repeatedly that Hillary Clinton did not win the popular vote in 2016 after all. He estimated she got three million more votes than she legally should have. His supporters have long suspected those votes came:

1. In the names of the dead and the move-outs, or
2. From illegal aliens.

The Election Integrity Commission will examine all these questions for the whole country. A federal commission will have access to immigration and visa records. They can then check these against the voter rolls. State Departments of State couldn’t do that even if they wanted to. (Which some don’t! James O’Keefe laid information with authorities in Wisconsin about conspiracy to commit voter fraud. And those authorities dismissed his evidence. Look for him to testify before what wags will likely call the Pence Commission.)

The scope of the problem

WorldNetDaily presents video evidence of voter fraud in its article. This includes James O’Keefe’s video about his experiences with the Wisconsin Justice Department. It also includes two videos featuring two men who worked together and with the Democratic Party. Their names are Scott Foval and Bob Creamer. They boast of “busing people in…for fifty years” and paying mentally ill people to vote illegally or do other things.

WorldNetDaily also carried these statistics:

…the North Carolina State Board of Elections confirmed at least 41 noncitizens cast ballots in 2016, Nevada found three cases. Ohio found 821 noncitizens registered to vote since 2013. And several individuals in Colorado cast absentee ballots in others’ names in 2016.

A word about those absentee ballots is in order. One outraged voter in Fairfax County, Virginia told WND of opening his wife’s absentee ballot kit. He found Democratic campaign material inside. This included a letter from Governor Terry McAuliffe urging the voter to “keep Virginia blue.”

Other witnesses described Fairfax County to CNAV as “The Wild West.” WND has an article about that, too. J. Christian Adams, founder of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, knows about the voter fraud problem. He worked in the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department during the Bush Younger administration. He served into Obama’s first term—then lost his job.

We know of election crimes that have gone on in the last seven years, one after another after another, that the federal government never prosecuted and never investigated, never did anything about and creating this Wild West atmosphere with voter fraudsters.

Now recall the efforts of the “True the Vote” campaign. For their pains, the IRS hassled “True the Vote.” When their leader testified before a House subcommittee, Representative Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) called her racist.

Direct experience

CNAV has reported on voter fraud often. (See here, here, and here.) This correspondent has worked elections in Essex County, New Jersey and Henrico County, Virginia. For many years Essex County used the century-old Print-O-Matic voting machines. Today they use the electronic touch-pad voting machines that leave no paper trail. They keep voter rolls on paper, in two-ring notebook binders. The only way the county election clerk knows to strike a voter from the rolls is from the Postal Service. A sample ballot comes back to them, after the letter carrier can’t deliver them. In fact, voter after voter told this correspondent, “Please stop sending sample ballots to such-a-person! He’s been dead for months!” Or else that he moved away.

So why do the sample ballots keep coming? This correspondent would mark the name as “deceased” or “moved” on the voter roll. And do the same thing next election—and the next, and the next, and the next.

The Henrico County system

Henrico County, Virginia, beginning in 2016, started a new system for voting: on paper. The county clerk supplies each precinct team with three computers. They have preloaded each with the names of the registered voters. The team links the computers together but not to the Internet. A voter can check in with any of three teammates. He must show a driver’s license or other photographic identification. (Only a very determined forger can forge a Virginia driver’s license.) The teammate checks his name off, and all three computers reflect the change. Then the teammate sends the voter to another teammate, who hands him a paper ballot. (Absentee and in-person ballots look exactly the same.) The voter votes this in private, then hands it to one last teammate for scanning. The scanner takes the ballot, records the votes on it, then drops it into a locked cabinet.

Out of sheer practicality, no voter can vote more than once. Nor can anyone ever rig the vote in any precinct. Someone will always count the paper ballots and compare them to the scanner tape.

Provisional ballots

Both counties have a system to handle another problem. Suppose a voter shows up at the wrong precinct? The precinct team can’t always check to direct the voter to the correct precinct. In that case they issue a provisional ballot. In either county, this is a paper ballot and goes into a sealed envelope. The precinct captain turns this in at the town hall or county government office. They forward it to the county clerk’s office, or the State Division of Elections. Officials there will open the ballot only after determining the voter did not in fact vote somewhere else.

But how scrupulous are these officials? Some officials have never scrubbed the names of the dead or the move-outs from the voter rolls. How then can one trust them with provisional ballots?

Predictable reaction

Predictably, liberals protested the set-up of the Pence Commission almost before the ink dried on Trump’s executive order creating it. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a request for the evidence of voter fraud Trump cited. Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) called Vice-Chairman Kobach “an enemy of American democracy.” The Brennan Center for Justice cited their survey of 42 American cities and counties. They claimed that in 40, election officials reported “no known incidents of non-citizen voting.”

Mr. Kobach told The Washington Times of an obvious problem: “motor voter” laws. Some State Divisions of Motor Vehicles let a driver register to vote while getting or renewing a driver’s license. Now that might be appropriate in a State that rigorously checks ID for all driver’s license applicants. But in States that don’t, an immigrant might still register to vote while still a resident alien. This shows the value of access to immigration records in investigating voter fraud.

Of course Mr. Kobach didn’t mention another problem. When a voter moves from one State to the next, the new State Department of State usually notifies the old about the move. But no one checks to see that the old State strikes the name of the move-out from the voter rolls. This would allow a voter to stay registered to vote and still vote in the old State—by absentee ballot.

Can the Pence Commission stop voter fraud?

On that question, depends the future of this country. Donald Trump won in a coalition of States, many of which no Republican had carried in years. He galvanized enough voters to carry those States despite the votes of the dead, move-outs, and illegal aliens. (Terry McAuliffe made that last problem worse: he signed an order letting convicts vote.) Now Trump must move to scrub those names. This is the last chance to reclaim Constitutional government.

Liberals know the stakes. They want to go on doing voter fraud. Scott Foval boasted he’d been doing it for fifty years. Which means the composition of the House and Senate could change drastically if the Pence Commission succeeds. And that change, people of good will can only welcome.