Maryland: Voter fraud allegations against Rosen prompt Maryland write-in campaigns | baltimoresun.com

The Maryland Democratic Party this week said it will back a write-in candidate challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Harris in Maryland’s 1st Congressional District — which includes much of Carroll County — after voter fraud allegations ended the previous Democratic candidate’s bid. The party had scrambled for a replacement since its primary winner Wendy Rosen had to drop out of the race on Sept. 10, after confirming reports that she had voted in two different states in more than one election. The party this week threw its support behind John LaFerla, 63, a gynecologist from Chestertown, who had lost in the primary to Rosen by just 57 votes. But because LaFerla is late entering the campaign he will have to run as a write-in candidate, a distinct disadvantage.

Pennsylvania: Voter ID Laws ‘Stink,’ Says Republican Community Leader | Huffington Post

Longtime Republican politician Stanley R. Lawson Sr. says he knows a rat when he smells one. And what’s going on politically around recently passed voter ID laws in his home state of Pennsylvania reeks of partisan politics. Lawson, 70, a registered Republican, is currently the head of the Harrisburg chapter of the NAACP, but has served as chair to the Dauphin County Republican Party and as a member of the Harrisburg City Council. “The whole thing stinks,” Lawson told The Huffington Post on Friday afternoon. “They say the reason they did this is because of all the fraud going on. But I happen to be a former Republican chairman of the county, I’ve been on the city council, I’ve been a township commissioner, and I’ve never seen it or heard anyone complain about voter fraud.”

National: The Ballot Cops | The Atlantic

The afternoon before early voting began in the 2010 midterm elections, a crowd of people gathered in the offices of a Houston Tea Party group called the King Street Patriots. They soon formed a line that snaked out the door of the Patriots’ crumbling storefront and down the block, past the neighboring tattoo parlor. The volunteers, all of whom had been trained by the Patriots to work as poll watchers, had come to collect their polling-place assignments. As they waited, the group’s chief trainer, Alan Vera—a mustachioed former Army ranger who likens poll observers to commandos who “jump out of airplanes” and “blow things up”—walked the line, shaking hands. As he would later recall, he then launched into a drill-sergeant routine. “Are you ready?” “We’re ready!” “Strength and honor! Remember your mission! Your mission is the vote!” The next day, King Street Patriots—many of them aging white suburbanites—poured into polling places in heavily black and Hispanic neighborhoods around Houston, looking for signs of voter fraud. Reports of problems at the polls soon began surfacing in the Harris County attorney’s office and on the local news. The focus of these reports was not fraud, however, but alleged voter intimidation. Among other things, poll observers were accused of hovering over voters, blocking lines of people who were trying to cast ballots, and, in the words of Assistant County Attorney Terry O’Rourke, “getting into election workers’ faces.”

Maryland: Democrats find new candidate for House race after voter-fraud claims knock out primary winner | Fox News

The Democratic Party has a new challenger to Rep. Andy Harris in Maryland’s 1st Congressional District, after voter fraud allegations ended the previous candidate’s bid, but the odds of his beating the incumbent are slim.  The party had scrambled for a replacement since its primary winner Wendy Rosen had to drop out of the race on Sept. 10, after confirming reports that she had voted in two different states in more than one election. Now, after a week-long search, the party has thrown its support behind John LaFerla, the 63-year-old gynecologist from Chestertown, who had lost in the primary to Rosen by just 57 votes.

Editorials: In-Person Voter Fraud: Not Really a Matter of Opinion | Mother Jones

After running a story about voter access laws last Sunday, the New York Times got some complaints from readers about its he-said-she-said treatment of whether voter fraud is a serious problem. Margaret Sullivan, the Times’ public editor, asked the reporter and editor of the piece for their views:

The national editor, Sam Sifton, rejected the argument. “There’s a lot of reasonable disagreement on both sides,” he said. One side says there’s not significant voter fraud; the other side says there’s not significant voter suppression. “It’s not our job to litigate it in the paper,” Mr. Sifton said. “We need to state what each side says.” Mr. Bronner agreed. “Both sides have become very angry and very suspicious about the other,” he said. “The purpose of this story was to step back and look at both sides, to lay it out.” While he agreed that there was “no known evidence of in-person voter fraud,” and that could have been included in this story, “I don’t think that’s the core issue here.”

This is a pretty remarkable response.

Editorials: The Racial Burdens Obscured by Voter ID Laws | The Nation

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court hearing on Applewhite v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, over the state’s voter ID law, was serious enough that it drew the presence of Ben Jealous, the president of the national NAACP. After ninety minutes of arguing about the fundamental right to vote before the state’s six supreme court justices, Jealous said he was “cautiously optimistic” that civil rights groups might prevail in the case. Perhaps cautiously pessimistic, I couldn’t help but think, But what if they don’t? When I asked Jealous this, he said: “We will have volunteers throughout the state demanding that everyone who is eligible to vote and who has a right to vote will be able to vote. And then we will make sure every provisional ballot is counted and make sure the polls stay open and we will fight to make sure the polls stay open as long as necessary.” In other words, the NAACP, and a lot of civil rights and liberties organizations like them, would be absorbing the burden imposed by the Pennsylvania law, which mandates specific forms of photo ID in order to vote.

Editorials: It’s time to move beyond debate over voter ID | Houston Chronicle

If there has ever been an issue of less practical or political import that has produced more litigation, legislation, public debate and passion than voter ID, I cannot imagine what it would be. I agree with the majority of Americans that producing some kind of ID to prove you are who you say you are when you vote is not an unreasonable safeguard. However, I am equally convinced that the amount of voter fraud generally is minuscule and the number of people actually showing up to vote using a false identity is even rarer. It is evident that the latter proposition is true because in none of the litigation over voter ID have any of the states defending the laws even attempted to make any showing of actual voter fraud. It was somewhat surprising to me that the courts have consistently said that the states do not have to show actual incidents of fraud to justify requiring identification. The courts have ruled the states have a right to impose reasonable safeguards solely to assure the public that elections are fair. But let’s not pretend that either side of this issue cares about the merits of the issue. This is pure political calculation.

Hawaii: Police Open Investigation Into Possible 2010 Voter Fraud | Big Island Now

Hawaii County police say they have launched an investigation into an allegation of voter fraud on the Big Island. In a brief statement sent out at 4:26 p.m. today, Capt. Mitchell Kanehailua of the Criminal Investigation Division said the investigation is based on information provided by the Hawaii County Office of Elections involving elections conducted in 2010. According to Kanehailua’s statement, voter fraud is a class “C” felony. Such crimes carry a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

Maryland: Wendy Rosen voting allegations sent to prosecutors in Florida | baltimoresun.com

Elections officials in Florida say they are asking prosecutors there to investigate allegations that former Maryland congressional candidate Wendy Rosen was registered and voted in both states. “After receiving information locally concerning this issue, we are referring this matter to the State Attorney’s Office of the Sixth Judicial Circuit of Florida,” Julie Marcus, the deputy supervisor of elections for Pinellas County, Fla., said Tuesday. State prosecutors in Maryland, meanwhile, declined to say whether they were investigating the allegations here. Rosen, who won a close Democratic primary in April to challenge Republican Rep. Andy Harris in the 1st Congressional District, withdrew from the race Monday after she was confronted with the allegations by the Maryland Democratic Party.

Indiana: Ex-Secretary of State White appeals 3 convictions | Post-Tribune

Former Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White is appealing three of the six felony convictions that got him ousted from office earlier this year. The appeal filed last week in the Indiana Court of Appeals challenges his convictions on charges of perjury on his marriage license application, submitting a false voter registration application and casting a fraudulent ballot. The brief does not contest White’s three other felony convictions.

Iowa: Iowa’s new voter rules face scrutiny | Omaha.com

New voter rules that Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz created in July face a hurdle at the courthouse and a hurdle at the Capitol. Polk County Judge Mary Pat Gunderson is considering legal arguments over whether to allow Schultz to move forward with what he is calling emergency rules, and the Legislature’s Administrative Rules Review Committee is scheduled to meet today to consider taking action on those same rules. If the voting rules are upheld, Schultz would be allowed to purge certain voters from Iowa’s voter registration list, and it would be easier to report voter fraud. Schultz, a Republican, approved the rules in July without public input, saying he had to act before the November election to ensure that noncitizens don’t vote. Schultz has asked the legislative committee to approve the rules permanently. The group has little authority to stop the rules from taking effect if Gunderson finds that Schultz had the legal authority to create them.

Editorials: Voting Rights: This Is What a Strong Party Platform Would Look Like | Andrew Cohen/The Atlantic

In tone and tenor, the Democratic and Republican voting-rights planks could not be more different. But there’s clearly room for a third way. The most elemental civil right, the one from which all other rights ultimately flow, is the right to vote. Can we all at least agree on that? This election year, to a degree unimaginable even in the wake of the Florida recount and Bush v. Gore, the issue of voting rights and election procedures is a key part of the political debate leading up to the first Tuesday in November. It’s as if some great lock has been turned, some vast door has been opened, and all the primal grievances from those furious days in November and December 2000 have come pouring out again. Add to the mix strident white fear about America’s changing demographics over the interceding decade, and you have a combustible brew indeed.

North Dakota: Bison players among 11 facing voter fraud charges | The Jamestown Sun

Eight current North Dakota State University football players and one former player are among 11 people expected to be charged with voter fraud tied to two attempts to place measures on this fall’s general election ballot. Backers of the measures pulled from the ballot expressed sadness Tuesday. “We’re extremely disappointed that this alleged fraud occurred. We had no desires to be on the ballot in any other than a pure and honest way,” said Stephen Adair, chairman of the committee backing a constitutional initiative that, had it passed, would have created a land and water conservation fund.

Massachusetts: East Longmeadow girds for primary election amid voter fraud investigation | masslive.com

The town continues to try to fend off political disarray with a looming primary election at hand Thursday supervised by outsiders amid a criminal investigation into voter fraud, and a potential two-thirds void in its governing body of three. Point one: The town of 15,000 with 11,000 registered voters has two of three selectmen after Enrico “Jack” Villamaino, a three-term selectman, resigned after he fell under investigation for voter fraud as he was running in the Republican primary for the state representative seat against Longmeadow Republican Marie Angelides. Point two: Town officials and criminal investigators said the Town Clerk’s office was flooded with absentee ballots mid-election cycle with a quadrupling of historically Democratic voters transitioning to unenrolled without the voters’ knowledge. The Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Office and local and state police converged when the alleged improprieties surfaced. The actual ballots were unaccounted for. Former East Longmeadow selectman Enrico P. Villamaino III is reportedly now married to a co-suspect in a voter fraud investigation, Courtney Llewellyn.

Editorials: Crying wolf about voter fraud in Montana | Linda McCulloch/Ravlli Republic

We’re all familiar with Aesop’s Fable, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” The cautionary tale taught us that intentionally lying about something has its consequences, and that those consequences can negatively impact the people around us. Crying wolf about the security of Montana’s elections is an intentional and deliberate attempt to decrease voter turnout by gaining support for laws that will restrict your right to vote. These false allegations of massive voter fraud have been tediously repeated despite all evidence to the contrary, and it’s time for the deceivers to start bearing the burden of proof. As your secretary of state, and chief elections officer, I take every allegation of election fraud seriously. I launched the “The Fair Elections Center” early in my term so that every Montanan could easily report a potential state election law violation. Every allegation is documented, reviewed and, if warranted, passed on to the appropriate authorities.

Editorials: GOP-Backed Voter Fraud Laws Aim To Disenfranchise Students | The Daily Beast

Twenty-one-year old Gillian Demers says she was “more than a little afraid” when she received a letter from the state warning she may be breaking the law—by registering to vote. Last September, the University of Maine senior received a letter from Maine’s secretary of state, Republican Charles Summers, questioning her right to vote in her newly adopted state. Two hundred and five other students received the same letter, sent after the state’s GOP chairman, Charlie Webster, asked his GOP colleague to investigate if the students had the right to vote in Maine. Unless she met certain bureaucratic regulations like registering for a Maine driver’s license, Summers’s letter said, Demers would have to revoke her  residency or be in violation of a law that could mean up to six months in jail. The letter is just one example of new laws and regulations rolled out largely by Republican-controlled statehouses over the last two years. Purportedly aimed at preventing voter fraud, the laws suppress the votes of students and minorities and, according to court records and interviews with political insiders from both parties, at least some GOP officials know it.

Wisconsin: Lawmaker’s wife casts vote in Wisconsin while Idaho resident | WKOW

he wife of a prominent state lawmaker cast a vote in Wisconsin’s April presidential primary election, even though she was a resident of Idaho at the time. Wisconsin Government Accountability Board records show Samantha Vos voted in the state’s April 3 election. Vos is the wife of Rep. Robin Vos (R-Rochester), the co-chair of the state’s powerful joint finance committee. But records from Canyon County, Idaho show Samantha Vos swore under oath April 19 she was a resident of that state since early March. Vos’ declaration came as she filed for legal separation from her husband. Wisconsin law requires twenty eight days of continuous residency prior to voting. Attempts by 27 News to reach Samantha Vos have been unsuccessful.

Voting Blogs: Ending the Voting Wars | Rick Hasen/TPM

Over the last few days I’ve been describing some of the major problems with our elections which I cover in The Voting Wars. Too many U.S. jurisdictions allow our elections to be run by political partisans. Local officials have too much control, and often lack adequate training and resources. Political rhetoric has been ratcheted up and mistrust has been building thanks to spurious and exaggerated claims of voter fraud (and in some cases voter suppression) by political provocateurs. Social media inflames partisan passions and could push the next election meltdown into the streets. What can be done to end the voting wars? We might begin by asking about the goals of a fair and effective election system. Most people of good faith considering this problem likely would agree with this statement: an election system should be designed so that all eligible voters, but only eligible voters, may freely cast a vote which will be accurately counted. If we were able to design our system of running elections from scratch, the best way to achieve this goal would be to use a system of national, nonpartisan election administration. The people who run our elections should have their primary allegiance and owe their professional success to the fairness and integrity of the political process and not to a political party. This is how it is done in Australia, Canada, the U.K., and most other serious democracies.

Tennessee: Study suggests voter ID laws aren’t addressing the real problem — unless the problem is a Democratic turnout | Nashville Scene

“Well, I think we told you so.” That’s how state House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh responded to yet more evidence that voter ID laws like Tennessee’s, and others around the country, solve a problem that doesn’t exist. At a recent press conference, Fitzhugh and House Democratic Caucus chairman Mike Turner discussed concerns arising from this month’s primary elections — including that some voters received incorrect ballots, while others with proper identification weren’t allowed to vote. Just two days earlier, the Carnegie-Knight Initiative’s investigative reporting project News21 released a comprehensive study of American election fraud since 2000. The study found that in-person voter fraud — the type that voter ID laws were ostensibly created to stop — is “virtually nonexistent.” Out of 14 cases of reported fraud in Tennessee since 2000, the study said, none involved in-person voter impersonation, and thus would not have been stopped by the photo ID requirement. Those findings fuel suspicion that the motivation for such laws has less to do with rampant fraud and more to do with the laws’ probable effect: lower turnout in demographics that are more likely to vote Democratic but less likely to have a valid photo ID. Moreover, the nationwide push for voter ID laws — 62 laws, proposed in 37 states in the past two legislative sessions, according to the News21 report — was fueled in large part by conservative legislation-factory the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Editorials: The Fake Voter Fraud Epidemic and the 2012 Election | TPM

Of all the developments in The Voting Wars since 2000, the lead story has to be the successful Republican effort to create an illusion of a voter fraud epidemic used to justify a host of laws, especially tough new state voter identification requirements, with the aim to suppress Democratic turnout and to excite the Republican base about “stolen” elections. Democrats sometimes have exaggerated the likely effects of such laws on turnout—we won’t see millions of voters disenfranchised by state voter id laws, for example. But in a very close presidential election, as we are likely to see in November, new voter id rules, voter purges in places like Colorado and Florida, cutbacks in early voting in Ohio, and other technical changes have the potential to suppress Democratic turnout enough to swing the election from Obama to Romney. How did we get here? Our story begins with what Josh has aptly referred to as “bamboozlement” by a group of political operatives, “The Fraudulent Fraud Squad.”

National: New database of US voter fraud finds no evidence that photo ID laws are needed | News21

A new nationwide analysis of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases since 2000 shows that while fraud has occurred, the rate is infinitesimal, and in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tough voter ID laws, is virtually non-existent. In an exhaustive public records search, reporters from the investigative reporting projecdt News21 sent thousands of requests to elections officers in all 50 states, asking for every case of fraudulent activity including registration fraud, absentee ballot fraud, vote buying, false election counts, campaign fraud, casting an ineligible vote, voting twice, voter impersonation fraud and intimidation.

Click to search the national database of voter fraud cases compiled by News21.

Editorials: Mitt Romney’s tax returns: the ‘voter fraud’ theory | MS Bellows Jr/guardian.co.uk

Friday’s exchange of letters between the election campaigns of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, in which Romney rejected Obama’s offer to drop the tax return issue if Romney will produce just three more years’ records, has moved the long-simmering brouhaha over Romney’s tax returns back to the front media burner. That’s many fewer than any presidential candidate has disclosed in decades, setting up the hearsay accusation disseminated joyfully by Harry Reid (who may or may not actually believe it) that Romney is afraid to tell voters that he sometimes pays no taxes at all. (Romney has answered that, saying he has never paid less than 13% in taxes on his income.) Meanwhile, Romney appears to have escaped relatively unsinged from the apparently unrelated revelation that he may have committed voter fraud in January 2010, when – despite not owning a house inMassachusetts and having given every appearance of having moved to California – he registered and voted in the Massachusetts special election to replace the deceased Senator Ted Kennedy. Given the GOP’s ongoing use of the “voter fraud” fable to justify modern Jim Crow laws and its highly-publicized persecution of the voter registration groupAcorn, an actual case of felony voter fraud committed by the Republican nominee could have been a big story – but Romney was able to tamp down the flames by claiming, not very credibly but also not disprovably, that he and Ann actually were living in their son Tagg’s Belmont, Massachusetts basement in 2010. Without proof that Romney lied about where he lived, there’s no felony – and no big national story.

Iowa: Secretary of State continues voter fraud hunt despite lack of evidence | Watchdog News

Efforts by Iowa’s top election official to uncover voter fraud may prove difficult. A new study analyzed 2,068 alleged cases of voter fraud nationwide and found only 10 cases related to voter impersonation, according to the research from a national investigative reporting project funded by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative. Iowa had no such cases. Here, Republican Secretary of State Matt Schultz has vowed to put a voter ID law in place and prove fraud in the state does exist. Schultz, 33, has yet to produce such results since taking office in 2011, despite his expansive efforts to purge voter rolls, which led to a lawsuit brought by two civil rights groups. “When you enact these voter ID laws it will basically change the outcome of an election in favor of Republicans by one or two percentage points,” said Seth Masket, an associate political science professor at the University of Denver in Colorado. “Usually, it’s not enough to affect the outcome of the election. But in a close race like this year’s presidential election, it can make a difference.”

Massachusetts: Voter fraud suspected in Massachusetts House primary | Boston.com

The district attorney in Hampden County is investigating whether a ­Republican candidate for state representative orchestrated an illegal scheme to cast absentee ballots on behalf of hundreds of voters in hope of winning a primary election. State election officials were tipped off to the potential voter fraud when a suspiciously large number of residents of the Springfield suburb of East Longmeadow suddenly changed party registration from Democrat to independent, making them eligible to vote in the upcoming Republican primary. When contacted, several of the voters said they had not changed party affiliations, raising concern that someone had switched their party in an attempt to cast fraudulent absentee ballots on their behalf.

National: Twitter and other social media will make the next close presidential election much worse than Florida in 2000 | Slate Magazine

The tweets were full of rage. As officials began to tally the results of the tight ballots, many voters suspected fraud. After all, there had been allegations of election misconduct before, as well as lost-and-found votes. Trust in government officials didn’t run high. By late in the evening, one opposition party leader came forward, accusing a local election official of “tampering with the results.” Fears of a political backlash rose. Soon there were even suggestions of violence. The scene wasn’t the site of some Arab Spring-inspired revolution. It was Wisconsin in August 2011. Wisconsin residents had just voted on whether to recall a number of state senators, with the potential to flip the legislative body from Republican to Democratic hands. The vote totals were rolling in from polling places across the state, and I was following the reaction of hundreds of political junkies tweeting about the results using the hashtag #wirecall. That evening provides a window into what the world could look like should we be unlucky enough to have our next presidential election as close as the 2000 presidential election. Wisconsin could be our future, and it’s not a pretty picture.

Florida: Once Again Florida at Center of Debate Over Voting Rules | News21

Florida’s hanging chads and butterfly ballots in 2000 ignited the divisive battle that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court denying an election recount, effectively declaring that George W. Bush won the presidential election by 537 votes. Another potentially close election is ahead, and the nation’s largest swing state is again at the center of a partisan debate over voting rules — this time, a fight about the removal of non-citizens from Florida’s voter roll and how the state oversees groups who register voters. It is set against a national backdrop of a bitter fight between Democrats who say voting rights of students and minorities are endangered and Republicans who say that voter fraud is widespread enough to sway an election. While many other states have considered laws that would require that people show a photo ID before they can vote, Florida has taken a different tack. Republicans there wrote a law in 2011 that they said would eliminate voter registration fraud by more closely controlling third-party registration, early voting hours and voter address updates. “With the old law, some things weren’t illegal or designated as fraud,” said Rep. Dennis Baxley, an Ocala Republican and funeral home owner who sponsored the bill.

Ukraine: Ukraine’s election web cameras: hollow eyes | Kyiv Post

This month, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych signed a $125 million bill into law that will install two web cameras in each of Ukraine’s 34,000 polling stations in time for the Oct. 28 parliamentary elections. The move comes after Russia installed web cameras and provided a live feed from polling stations during the March presidential election.  The web cameras were installed in response to accusations of vote tampering during the previous parliamentary election, supported by voter videos from polling stations uploaded to YouTube. When announcing plans for the legislation, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov emphasized that web cameras would eliminate any accusations of election fraud. “We have decided to set up web cameras at each polling station. This will remove all speculation about the possibility of election fraud.  Interestingly those who talked most about potential election fraud voted against the web cameras. We will get the job done, and everyone will have an opportunity to observe the elections online,” said the Ukrainian prime minister.

National: Voter fraud found to be rare, survey indicates | KansasCity.com

A new nationwide analysis of more than 2,000 cases of alleged election fraud over the past dozen years shows that in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which has prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tougher voter ID laws, was virtually nonexistent. The analysis of 2,068 reported fraud cases by News21, a Carnegie-Knight investigative reporting project, found 10 cases of alleged in-person voter impersonation since 2000. With 146 million registered voters in the United States, those represent about one for every 15 million prospective voters. The News21 report is based on a national public-records search in which reporters sent thousands of requests to elections officers in all 50 states, asking for every case of alleged fraudulent activity — including registration fraud; absentee-ballot fraud; vote buying; false election counts; campaign fraud; the casting of ballots by ineligible voters, such as felons and non-citizens; double voting; and voter impersonation.

Editorials: The truth about voter fraud | The Washington Post

Ostensible justification for a spate of Republican-sponsored voter ID laws — which would require voters to present government-issued photo ID at the polls — has been the threat of voter fraud, specifically, in-person voter impersonation. It has seemed likely, given the absence of evidence of such crimes, that the threat was overstated. Now we know for sure: Such fraud virtually never takes place. Listening to Republican advocates of voter ID laws, you’d think that impersonations at the polls are the biggest danger to democracy since the Chicago political machine allegedly registered thousands of dead people to vote for John F. Kennedy in 1960. The Republican National Lawyers Association — devoted to promoting “open, fair and honest elections” — frequently cites the figure of 375 cases of voter impersonation fraud.

Iowa: Agent hired to chase voter fraud | San Francisco Chronicle

An Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation agent has been assigned to work full-time with Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s office to look into allegations of voter fraud, the Republican election chief’s top cause, state officials confirmed Friday. Schultz’s office said it will spend up to $280,000 in tax dollars over the next two years for the services of Special Agent Daniel Dawson, who has been reassigned from the major crimes unit to work exclusively on voting and election fraud issues. DCI assistant director Charis Paulson said Dawson is already looking into about 2,000 possible voter fraud violations identified through data matching performed by Schultz’s office. The appointment took county auditors, who run elections and work with local investigators on voting-related crimes, by surprise when they were introduced to Dawson during a training meeting Wednesday in Cedar Rapids. They complained they had little information about what Dawson was investigating and how the 2,000 potential violations were identified.