While the mainstream media denies the very existence of vote fraud, local newspapers have been noting election fraud and problems that have escaped the notice of the DC-based pundits. 

First off we’ll start with the swing state of Pennsylvania.  Pennsylvania is experiencing an increase in vote by mail and is already challenged by it.  The first problem is voters are receiving duplicate ballots and no one knows who or how many.    

It is not clear how many voters have received duplicate ballots, or for how long the problem persisted. A county spokeswoman said there was "no way to know" the scope of the problem.  In a Friday call with reporters, county Elections Manager Dave Voye agreed: "We don’t have a full scope of how many were mailed," he said, later adding that the county was unlikely to obtain one. He said the county had determined the issue began in late April, and was addressed earlier this week. . . .

A 2019 change in state law made voting by mail far easier – and the coronavirus has made it incredibly popular. Jeff Greenburg, who manages elections in Mercer County, told WESA earlier this month that the SURE system was “part of the bottleneck” that elections workers faced in dealing with an influx of mail-in requests. Counties have a limited number of terminals with access to the system, and a limited number of staff to verify voter information from people receiving the ballots. He worried that a crush of last-minute ballot applications would further strain the system. . . .

Asked whether he expected conservative groups to use the snafu in an effort to cast aspersions on the voting process, DeMarco said, “I think it’s within anyone’s rights to start asking question. When you think about how important our elections are, and we tell everyone who safe mail-in ballots are, and then people are getting ballots they didn’t even ask for."

It takes time to sort out these problems.  It often takes years to uncover vote fraud and nothing may be done about. In another swing state, Wisconsin, possible vote fraud was uncovered in 19 counties from the 2018 election. Despite almost two years having passed, nothing has been done. As described in an article entitled State Suspects Voter Fraud Committed in 19 Wisconsin Counties: Absentee Voting Involved in 35 of 43 Incidents:

The incidents involved 19 different counties. According to the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access system, there has not been a single case of election fraud filed anywhere in Wisconsin since WEC made its recommendations. Dane County had the most referrals: 8 of them. Walworth County came in second with 7 referrals. Kenosha and Milwaukee both had 5 incidents.  . . .

The most common way to commit voter fraud (allegedly) was to vote absentee in one state and then vote in person at the polls in Wisconsin. That’s what happened in 22 of the instances.

Absentee voting in Wisconsin accounted for 13 of the cases. Of those, 7 also voted absentee in the second state.

There were 8 people who seem to have voted at the polls in Wisconsin on Election Day, and then drove across the state line to vote again in Illinois. Only three of them were from border counties. The rest came from Milwaukee, Dane, and Racine Counties.

This problem is likely to increase in 2020 where some voters may want to vote in the highly targeted state of Wisconsin over their non-targeted home state.  But these red or blue states also have examples of fraud.  For example in Indiana: 

Prosecutors in Evansville are looking into the actions of a Democratic Party activist accused of illegally sending out absentee voter applications to people who requested them that only leave them the option of participating in the Democrat primary.

. . .

County Democratic Party chair Edie Hardcastle said Reed was misinformed and that she didn’t understand it was “not OK” to do that. County prosecutors are reviewing the case now and it’s possible Reed could be charged with a felony.

One of the problems with mail voting is chain of custody issues.  It is not just a rogue official marking a ballot but it could also be a ne'er-do-well postal employee as happened in West Virginia.     

This week, the Department of Justice announced a federal charge against 47-year-old Thomas Cooper for allegedly manipulating requests for absentee ballots in West Virginia.

. . .

The criminal complaint against Cooper alleges that the Pendleton County clerk, who was going through the process of approving hundreds of absentee voter requests after West Virginia mailed the requests to every registered voter, noticed eight forms that had been delivered to the Pendleton County Courthouse that appeared to have had the voters' party-ballot requests altered.

She said they also verify the voter's party affiliation with what they checked on their request form. White said when the forms did not match with the voter's affiliated party, they set the voter's name aside.

. . .

"When we called one of the voters, they indicated to us they had not selected the party that was circled," White said. "They had to underline theirs, and then, as we looked closer, we realized they had indeed underlined and it was in different colored ink."

One way to stop vote fraud and combat election official mistake is through people observing elections.  As RNLA and past volunteer Robert Ostrom wrote:

There is voter fraud, and paper ballots are a prime source.

I am a Republican lawyer from Washington, D.C., where I have spent more than 50 years in politics.

I was part of the legal teams for presidential candidates George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney in several different states. I also am a long-time member of the noted Republican National Lawyers Association, whose mission is “to promote open, fair and honest elections at all levels of American society in a nondiscriminatory manner and to provide access to the polls to all qualified and eligible voters.”

For decades, the RNLA has lived up to its mission. I have come upon extensive voter fraud attempts in almost every election and we stopped most of it before any damage was done. 

Thank you, Robert, for volunteering.  Whether it is election fraud or officials making mistakes, we will close with another quote from an election official in Pennsylvania.

"No matter what we’ve seen so far, we might not have seen anything yet," Greenburg said.