A new report by journalist John Fund exposes how the push for automatic voter registration (AVR) will inevitably enable voter fraud.
Under AVR, voters are automatically added to the voter rolls when they are in contact with state agencies, such as the DMV. Oregon adopted the first AVR in 2016, and now twenty-six states, plus DC, use this system. Only two of the states are red states (Alaska and West Virginia), and one is purple (Georgia).
Without knowing any specific problems with AVR, one can already conclude that it’ll further damage election integrity simply by who support it. As Fund documents in his report, the push for AVR increased following the 2012 presidential election when it was advanced by over three dozen left-wing advocacy groups who met in D.C. to strategize election-related issues. We only know about this meeting because it was leaked.
Of the group’s top three goals, two were to expand voting rolls through AVR. Naturally, their priorities also included opposing voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements.
Among those on the left that have publicly called for AVR have included Thomas Perez, the then-head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights division, who later became Labor Secretary and the head of the DNC, Fast and Furious star Eric Holder, and more. Their public support led to a flow of money into the effort, including from the Soros-funded Tides Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, and more.
The leftist think tank Brennan Center, which has been responsible for some of the left’s most radical election reforms, also backs AVR.
In making the case against AVR, Fund points out that the Pew Research Center has already found that 24 million voter registrations in the U.S. are “no longer valid or significantly inaccurate,” a sum that amounts to one of every eight voter registrations. Furthermore, 2.8 million are registered in more than one state, and another 1.8 million are dead. As Fund argues; "think about what happens when a state has both automatic registration and same-day registration. Same-day registration allows individuals to register and vote on Election Day. Together, they create the perfect storm for registration and voter fraud. People could go to multiple voting sites, register, and vote without being detected. People can vote multiple times because they are registered multiple times. Bad actors can find the ineligible or duplicate voters and vote their ballots."
AVR will complicate things even further by registering people in contact with government offices. By design, this will lead to the registration of felons and non-citizens, as well as cause duplicate registrations. It’s no secret that states fail to clean their voter rolls:
Under federal law, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act and the 2002 Help America Vote Act require states to maintain accurate voter lists. Nonetheless, some state politicians ignore this law. In 2017, Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia vetoed a measure mandating investigations of elections in which ballots outnumbered eligible voters. Even more suspiciously, when then-GOP Governor Rick Scott tried to obey these laws and update Florida’s records, including deleting 51,308 deceased voters, Obama’s Justice Department sued to stop him. A major scandal hit Pennsylvania in 2017, after it was revealed that thousands of foreign nationals were registered to vote over two decades while getting their driver’s licenses or other forms of state ID.
In Pennsylvania, the State Department identified over 100,000 registered voters who may lack U.S. citizenship - many of whom were registered to vote even after checking “No” on a citizenship box.
Matt Palumbo is the author of Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers: How the Left Hijacked and Weaponized the Fact-Checking Industry and The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros
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