From the WSJ Opinion Archives
CROSS COUNTRY
Voting Early--and Often
Maryland swims against the election-reform current.
ANNAPOLIS, Md.--It should normally be difficult to pick the worst state legislature in America, but Maryland's is way out in front. First it overrode GOP Gov. Bob Ehrlich's veto of a special health-care tax on Wal-Mart. Democratic legislators then passed three election-related bills and again mustered the necessary three-fifths votes to overturn his vetoes. Together the election laws would so weaken safeguards against voter fraud as to make Maryland the nation's prime example of Election Day irresponsibility.
The gravity of the changes is causing dismay, and not just for the governor. A bipartisan state advisory commission headed by the revered George Beall, the former U.S. attorney who convicted Spiro Agnew of tax evasion, had urged legislators to sustain the Ehrlich vetoes.
The most troublesome bill undermines the concept of local polling places by allowing all voters to vote anywhere in Maryland using a provisional ballot. Gilles Burger, chairman of the state's Board of Elections, flatly says the bill invites fraud. His testimony prompted the Beall commission to warn that it would mean "a provisional ballot could be cast successfully in multiple counties and not be detected until after the votes were certified."
Another bill would allow any voter to cast an absentee ballot for any reason. The state's League of Women Voters noted that the bill undermines Election Day as the foundational day when votes are by law supposed to be cast. The league points out that absentee voting increases risks to "privacy, accuracy, security" and creates opportunities for "intimidation." Evidence also shows that absentee ballots are the most susceptible to fraud--and do not increase voter turnout.
A third bill imposes an unfunded mandate requiring all of Maryland's counties to let voters cast ballots during the five days before Election Day. Linda Lamore, the state's election administrator, warned legislators of her concerns about ballot security as well as her doubts the counties could comply by November.
Common Cause, which supports early voting, urged legislators to delay its implementation until 2008. The warnings fell on deaf ears. "You'll always have fraud, you can forget about that," Democratic state legislator Gareth Murray told colleagues. "I'm sick and tired of hearing we're not ready." Maryland will now become the only state in the nation to allow statewide early voting on touch-screen machines that lack a verifiable paper trail.
Fraud has a rich history in Maryland. In 19th-century Baltimore, the notorious Fourth Ward Club hired thugs to seize innocent strangers and foreigners, drug them with whiskey and opiates and send them out to cast multiple votes. One biographer of Edgar Allan Poe believes that when Poe died in 1849, he had been a victim of ruthless vote-fraud toughs who kidnapped him and left him drunk and near death on a Baltimore street. Today, Republicans accuse Baltimore Democrats of holding back stuffed ballot boxes until other counties have reported, while Democrats blame the GOP for an anonymous 2002 flyer that told Baltimore voters to turn out on the wrong Election Day after first paying overdue parking tickets and rent.
That hardball history doesn't fully explain the Legislature's actions, however. Blair Lee IV, the son of a former Democratic governor who is supporting an Ehrlich opponent this year, questions why Democrats are "pushing through such dangerous election laws opposed by nonpartisan election officials." He warns his party that "nothing is more important than the integrity of elections--not even defeating the Republicans in November."
But partisan tensions are now at flood level in Annapolis. Mr. Ehrlich, the first GOP governor in four decades, claims some Baltimore Sun writers are so unfair he won't cooperate with them. For his part, State Senate President Mike Miller boasted this month to his caucus that "we're going to shoot [Republican leaders] down. We're going to bury them face down in the ground, and it'll be 10 years before they crawl out again." Startled Republicans hope to collect 50,000 signatures calling for a November referendum on one or more of the election bills, a move that would block them from taking effect until after a vote.
Last September, a national commission headed by Jimmy Carter and James Baker recommended that all states require a valid photo ID to vote. Indeed, many states are now moving to boost polling safeguards. This month, Georgia's Legislature passed a revised law requiring every voter show a photo ID. Despite claims by NAACP chairman Julian Bond that a photo ID represents "an onerous poll tax," 10 House Democrats voted "aye." After all, the new Georgia law requires issuance of a free ID to anyone now lacking one.
Other legislatures are preparing to pass similar photo ID laws based on the recommendations of the Carter-Baker commission. They include Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, although Democratic governors in the last two are poised to veto them.
The proposed Pennsylvania law would also end Philadelphia's bizarre practice of locating over 900 polling places in private buildings, including bars, abandoned buildings and even the office of a local state senator. City officials acknowledge privately their voter rolls are stuffed with phantoms. The city has about as many registered voters as it has adults.
But no set of new laws will work if prosecutors encourage bad behavior by failing to pursue election irregularities. Several tell me they fear being accused of racism and aiding voter-suppression tactics if they pursue touchy fraud cases. One district attorney told the U.S. Government Accountability Office that he doesn't pursue phony voter registrations because they are "victimless and nonviolent crimes."
When voters are disenfranchised by the counting of improperly cast ballots or outright fraud, their civil rights are violated just as surely as if they were prevented from voting. The integrity of the ballot box is just as important to the credibility of elections as access to it. The Maryland lawmakers who are opening up new opportunities for fraud weaken the civil rights of all their constituents.
Mr. Fund, a columnist for OpinionJournal.com, is the author of "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy" (Encounter Books, 2004).
