Friday, Sept. 17, 2004 | 8:47 a.m.
President Bush, during his visit to Las Vegas this week, told Nevada Republican leaders that he was concerned about the possibility of voter registration fraud in Clark County. Bush also mentioned that federal officials could be sent here to investigate the allegations. And Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, told Secretary of State Dean Heller, a Republican, that he shared Bush's view.
These are some serious concerns, so a little background is needed to put this in context. Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax has said an unusually large number of people have registered to vote multiple times. Lomax has speculated that this might be the result of paid workers trying to fraudulently sign up as many people as possible in order to boost the money they receive from the political groups that have hired them -- something that clearly is illegal. But this doesn't necessarily mean that these new voters will end up trying to cast ballots several times -- Lomax noted that he didn't see any such fraud during the primary election. For that matter, with all the checks in place at each voting precinct, pulling off such fraud on Election Day would be incredibly difficult. We hope that federal investigators from the Justice Department aren't goi ng to be sent here as a partisan tactic to quell an effort by legitimate groups, which are backing Democrats, to register l! arge numbers of new voters. Rove's interest in all of this does make us suspicious about the real motives here.
President Bush would be taken more seriously on this issue if the GOP wasn't making a huge push this election to get Republicans to cast absentee votes, one of the easiest ways to commit voter fraud. In Nevada, to get an absentee ballot, you don't have to have a medical excuse nor do you have to say that you will be out of town on Election Day. Nevada law allows voters, for any reason, to use absentee voting. There really is no way to verify that those requesting ballots actually cast their votes by themselves. It truly is an honor system, and one that's ripe for fraud. How extensive is the Bush-Cheney absentee ballot campaign in Nevada? In Clark County alone it has sent out more than 370,000 absentee ballot request forms to voters -- and there are only 224,000 registered Republicans in Clark County.
Should President Bush be worried about the specter of fraud this election? You bet. But he's looking in the wrong place.
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