If nothing else, Secretary of State Dianna Duran deserves credit for getting to the bottom of that age-old, oft-repeated New Mexico folk tale about dead people voting. Not so much, it turns out.
And Duran can prove it, too. Once in office, she and her staff have taken the state’s voter list, torn it apart, put it back together and in the end, found almost no voter fraud in New Mexico. From the 64,000 voter registration records she once referred to state police as possible cases of voter fraud, we are down to 100-plus voters apparently registered illegally. Of those “illegally” registered, 19 possible non-citizens might have cast a ballot they should not have. Another 641 people, now believed to be deceased, remain on the rolls, although there is scant evidence they are voting. That’s out of 1.1 million registered voters, by the way.
Duran is no dummy, either. She knows that after her loud shouts about crooked voters, the investigation has turned up next to nothing (we’re waiting, by the way, to find out how much it has cost). No wonder, then, that her interim report contains a strike at possible critics: “To those who say that vote fraud (if it does exist) is ‘insignificant,’ our answer is that no instance of vote fraud, or ineligible registration, or ineligible voting, is now, or ever will be ‘insignificant’ to this office. Every single vote cast by an ineligible voter cancels and invalidates a vote cast by a legal voter, and leaves that law-abiding citizen completely disenfranchised. It may also alter the outcome of an election. That is the sober reality of the electoral system.”
And she’s right. No one wants ineligible voters casting ballots. Voting is as precious a right as we have and must be protected. Just as clearly, though, citizens must not be disenfranchised. Make no mistake, disenfranchisement is the goal — that’s the math Republicans like. Here’s how it works: more voters and bigger turnouts favor Democrats; fewer voters and smaller turnouts favor Republicans. It’s a long-acknowledged strategy of Republican operatives, then, to restrict access to the polls. Democrats, meanwhile, want to register everyone and increase voter turnout. It’s how the parties roll.
Full Article: Look elsewhere for voter fraud – The Santa Fe New Mexican.