Election Integrity Is the Last Thing Democrats Want.

• Author: Lott, John R., Jr.
• Position: POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

"With loose absentee voting rules, a country is making itself vulnerable to vote fraud. With mail-in voting, a country is almost begging for vote fraud." IN 2005, the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform issued a report that proposed a uniform system of requiring a photo GD in order to vote in U.S. elections. The report also pointed out that widespread absentee voting makes vote fraud more likely. Voter files contain ineligible, duplicate, fictional, and deceased voters, a fact easily exploited using absentee ballots to commit fraud. Citizens who vote absentee are more susceptible to pressure and intimidation, and vote-buying schemes are far easier when citizens vote by mail.

Who was behind the Carter-Baker Commission? Donald Trump? No. The Commission's two ranking members were former Pres. Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and former Secretary of State James Baker HI, a Republican. Other Democrats on the Commission were former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton. It was a truly bipartisan commission that made what seemed at the time to be commonsense proposals.

How things have changed. Some of the Commission's members, Carter among them, have come out to disavow the Commission's work, and despite surveys showing that Americans overwhelmingly support measures to ensure election integrity--a recent Rasmus-sen survey found that 80% of Americans support a voter ID requirement--Democratic leaders across the board oppose such measures in the strongest terms.

Here, for instance, is Pres. Joe Biden speaking in Philadelphia: "There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today, an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are--who we are as Americans. For, make no mistake, bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country." Sadly, but predictably, he went on to suggest that making voters present GDs would mean returning people to slavery.

In reality, the U.S. is an outlier among the world's democracies in the realm of voter IDs. Of the 47 countries in Europe today, 46 of them say citizens must present government-issued photo IDs to vote. The odd man out is the United Kingdom, in which North-em Ireland and many localities demand voter GDs, but the requirement is not nationwide. The British Parliament, however, is considering a nationwide...