Voting fraud found in Wake County | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer. We received this same press release, but did not have the time to work it up. Below we are providing an interesting image that explains the Governor's total abject hypocrisy.

    The SBI has been investigating voter fraud in Wake County after the Board of Elections there turned over information to the Wake County District Attorney. The News & Observer reported that: "Three Raleigh residents have been arrested for voting twice in the 2008 presidential elections, according to arrest warrants.

    Shelia Ramona Hodges, 46; Kierra Fontae Leach, 26; and Brandon Earl McLean, 25, have all admitted to either participating in early voting or using an absentee ballot and then voting again on Election Day.

    Each has been charged with voter fraud and are being held at Wake County Jail under $10,000 bonds.

    The State Bureau of Investigation has been investigating several voter fraud cases for some time, and it is now bringing charges against as many as eight people, according to District Attorney Colon Willoughby. Only three arrests have been made, but more warrants have yet to be served."

    In a subsequent story the N&O reports that six more warrants are outstanding and those charged are being sought.

    Responding to a press release from the N. C. Republican Party, the N&O apparently attempted to spin the story to keep it from being offered as what we hear at the Observer and others have contended for some time: There is voter fraud in North Carolina. Click here to read the N&O report.

    Click here for another story of the same situation.

    Click here for a story on the larger issue of election fraud in America.

    Don't miss the timeline here. These alledged offenses took place in November, 2008. They are just now coming out now that the voter photo ID bill has apparently been killed. There is no explanation from the SBI or District Attorney about what took so long to bring these charges.

    Commentary

    We think the story speaks for itself. There is fraud in the voting process in North Carolina, and we would contend much more than is actually known. Whether these nine cases would or would not have been either caught or blocked by a voter photo ID process is irrelevant. The point is that the system does not prevent fraud in the registration and voting process in this state. No one process, such as the photo ID, will eliminate all forms of fraud, but it will both eliminate and deter some of it. For that reason it is needed, in spite of the fact that Governor Perdue vetoed a bill to require photo ID's to vote.

    We recently had an occasion to visit our doctor's office. We were asked to show a photo ID and told that they could not render service unless we did so. So you apparently can't even go to a doctor with a photo ID, at least if you qualify for Medicare. Just sitting in the waiting room observer as other patients checked in it did not appear that showing a photo ID was a problem for any of them.

    These nine people would likely have not changed the outcome of any election in which they voted multiple times. But again, we don't think that is the point. The point is that if they nine would even try to do it leads us to suspect that many others tried...and were successful in getting by with doing it.

    And while we are on the subject of voter fraud we repeat what we've said before. The worst "voter fraud" is the fact that many people vote without knowing what they are voting on. We think that we not only need a fail-safe system to insure that the person voting is the person they contend they are but that each and every voter has a minimum level of citizenship knowledge. We would contend that every voter should be required to pass every four to eight years the same citizenship test that aliens have to pass to become American citizens just as you have to renew your driver's license. In fact we think it should be somewhat difficult to vote. If nothing else it would make the privilege mean more.

    (And by the way, we used the correct terms above. Voting is a privilege, not a right. At least not a constitutionally guaranteed right of all people. Want proof? Read the constitutions of the United States and North Carolina. What you learn is that our "right to vote" is actually a privilege extended by law to us and it certainly can be restricted. In fact, originally only about a third of the people were even eligible to vote....under the original constitution. Click here for a more detailed discussion of the topic.)