This week, officials at the North Carolina State Board of Elections announced they had discovered possible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the battleground state. By cross-checking North Carolina voter rolls with those in 28 other states, leaders of the board told state lawmakers they had found 35,750 records of people who voted in North Carolina and whose first name, last name and date of birth matched people who had voted in other states. More surprisingly, it also revealed 765 North Carolina voters in 2012 whose last four Social Security digits also matched those of people who voted in other states that year. The announcement fueled news headlines and outrage from North Carolina politicians, including legislators on an elections oversight committee who said the findings affirmed the need for voting restrictions passed by the General Assembly in 2013. House Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate Leader Phil Berger issued a joint statement hailing the “newly discovered, alarming evidence of voter error, fraud.”
State Republican Party Chairman Claude Pope said the report showed fraud “represents a significant threat” to elections and applauded his party’s efforts “to protect the integrity of the ballot box” — although measures such as voter ID, which addresses voter impersonation, would have no effect on voting in multiple states.
What the North Carolina election officials didn’t discuss is who had conducted the checks, and when or why the decision had been made to undertake them. They also didn’t mention the results of similar checks done in other states, which have led to only a handful of cases even being considered for prosecution.
The cross-check of North Carolina voters was conducted by the office of Kris Kobach, the controversial Secretary of State in Kansas. A long-time Republican political operative, Kobach is known nationally as the architect of legislation cracking down on immigrants in Arizona and elsewhere, as well as severe voting restrictions.
Full Article: Who’s driving North Carolina’s latest voter fraud hysteria?.