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Townhall...
Election
Integrity: It Matters
by Katie
Pavlich
News
Editor, Townhall
In 2009,
Catherine Engelbrecht of Houston volunteered to be a poll watcher. From
that
moment forward, her life changed.
During her
time as an election volunteer, she saw people come in with duplicate
registrations and people coming into the polling place to vote only to
find out
someone else had already voted for them through the mail. This, among other reasons,
is why Engelbrecht
founded True the Vote, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending
voter
fraud. True the Vote started with the intention of working locally, but
quickly
expanded to more than 35 states in just three short years.
“When you
just talk to average American voters, they’re concerned which is why
True the
Vote has become such a national movement in a short period of time,”
Engelbrecht said, stressing that currently only half of the necessary
poll
watchers needed are available, which is why True the Vote plans to
mobilize one
million volunteers for Election Day 2012.
Thursday,
The Heritage Foundation held a summit about voter fraud and Voter ID
featuring
Engelbrecht, Kansas Secretary of State Chris Kobach, Colorado Secretary
of
State Scott Gessler, South Carolina Secretary of State Alan Wilson and
former
Alabama Congressman Artur Davis.
According
to Rasmussen Reports, 64 percent of voters believe voter fraud is a
problem
while nearly 70 percent believe the requirement of photo ID to vote
makes
sense, yet the Obama Justice Department headed by Attorney General Eric
Holder
has been attacking state based Voter ID laws for months.
“There is a
disconnect between what the voters want and what the politicians want,”
Engelbrecht said. “A confident, engaged electorate leads to a united
America.”
Kansas
Secretary of State Chris Kobach recently lead the effort to get the
SAFE
program or Secure and Fair Elections Act passed by both Republicans and
Democrats in his state. The
act was
passed in April 2011 and early results of the SAFE act are already
positive. In
the first six months after the law went into effect, the state held 53
local
elections. During those elections, 68,000 votes were cast and of the
68,000
voters just 84 people showed up at the polls without photo ID although
most of
those people actually had ID but chose not to bring it to the polls for
one
reason or another. Out of 1.6 million registered voters, only 32 people
in the
entire state took advantage of the free photo ID offer from Kansas’
government...
Read the rest
of this article at Townhall
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