LETTER: Even minor election fraud should be prosecuted

DEAR EDITOR,

Steve Marcinko’s letter raised an interesting point. He observed that both political parties and many of their leaders have loudly questioned the integrity of the American voting system. So one might well question why we are seeing political conflict about something both sides have agreed upon.

But there’s another aspect to this debate that I’ve not seen addressed. The National Public Radio website has an article dated Dec. 1, entitled, “Barr Says No Election Fraud Has Been Found By Federal Authorities.” One only needs to read the article that follows to see that the headline is false. What the article states, accurately, is that, “the Justice Department has found no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the election.” The two statements are not the same.

And this is not just nitpicking. In fact, I believe every American should be troubled by the second assertion. We can draw some important conclusions from Attorney General Barr’s statements and other reports:

First, election fraud of several kinds has been discovered in many locations, and over many years.

Second, in many cases, especially this year, many instances were not caught as part of the registration and voting processes, but instead were discovered as a result of a one-time review.

Third, few of these events resulted in action by law enforcement.

And all this makes it clear that there will be little or no consequence for voter fraud until not just fraud, but detected fraud, becomes widespread enough to clearly change the election outcome. Presumably, then, any justice must be delayed until the time of an election even more chaotic than the last one, and the catastrophic damage will already be done.

Ask yourself what would be your reaction if you read headlines like,

“Armed Bank Robbers Released; Theft Didn’t Meet Dollar Minimum” or “Terrorism Charges Dropped; No Deaths From Bomb”

When did the Justice System give up on the concept of deterrence? Election fraud is deadly in a free society. For the authorities to implicitly allow it at any level, whenever it’s found, is dereliction that the public, Republican, Democrat or Independent, can’t afford to tolerate.

Tom Clearman