Arrest of Voters in Wake County North Carolina

Last Saturday's New Bern Sun Journal published an article about the arrest of three voters in Wake County on charges of voter fraud in 2008: here.This morning's News and Observer reported an additional arrest on similar charges.

All four cases apparently involved voting by absentee ballot (or at one-stop early voting) and subsequently voting at the normal voting precinct on election day. According to newspaper accounts, none of the accused attempted to impersonate another voter. They were legally registered voters eligible to cast votes in the election.

Would voter ID have prevented these four cases? No.

So what went wrong and how can this kind of double voting be eliminated?

First, we should recognize the magnitude of the task. In 2008,  444,013 Wake County voters out of 593,043 registered cast ballots in 189 precincts. If only four of those voters voted twice, my calculator can't display the percentage of error, it was so small. There are just too many zeroes after the decimal.

Secondly, until the charges are tried and evidence put before a court, we won't know whether any fraud was committed. A judge or jury might find inadvertence rather than intent.

The truth is, procedures are in place that should have caught and prevented double voting in these four cases. On the other hand, it is human beings who carry out these procedures. No organization is likely to achieve perfect results in any human endeavor. But improvement is in order.

How to do even better in the future? (Better, that is, than 99.999999999%)

Find the source(s) of the problem. I see two sources.

1. In 2008 Wake County had to print poll books for all 593,000 registered voters prior to one-stop. After one-stop but before election day, each precinct's poll book had to be manually corrected to show one-stop and mail-in absentee voters who had already voted. This is an enormous task.

2. Wake County uses optically scanned paper ballots instead of Direct Record Electronic voting machines. While the M-100 optical scanner has proven to be highly accurate with properly completed ballots, the system does not prevent the voter from making errors. In one of the cases charged, the voter explained that he inadvertently failed to vote on the reverse side of the paper ballot when he voted at one stop, and went back on election day to complete the back of the ballot. Direct Record Electronic voting machines like the IVotronic machines we use in Pamlico County would have reminded the voter of additional pages, informed him if he had left any selections blank and prevented him from selecting too many candidates for an office, thus spoiling his ballot. The paper ballots do not provide such safety features.

In Pamlico County, our Board of Elections strives for perfection. And we are constantly trying to improve our performance.

We are fortunate not to have to print poll books for more than half a million voters. On the other hand, we have limited resources. An advantage of being a small county is that we are able to try out new improvements more easily than the very large counties in the state. Last year, for example, we were able to introduce On Site Voter Registration Database (OVRD) to about half of our precincts. This system of computerized poll books greatly reduces the chances for errors like the four cases of double voting in Wake County.

We look forward to even more improvements in OVRD in the coming year.