President's Trump's calls for an investigation into the nationwide problem of vote fraud have generated a media fervor. Yet the problem of vote fraud is real, despite liberals' denials and efforts to stop common sense election integrity protections:
[President Obama] promised he would continue to fight voter-ID laws and other measures designed to improve voting integrity. The U.S. is “the only country among advanced democracies that makes it harder to vote,” he claimed.
This is demonstrably false. All industrialized democracies — and most that are not — require voters to prove their identity before voting. . . .
The real problem in our election system is that we don’t really know to what extent President Trump’s claim is true because we have an election system that is based on the honor system.
What we do know, despite assertions to the contrary, is that voter fraud is a problem, and both sides of the political aisle should welcome a real investigation into it -- especially since the Obama administration tried so hard for eight years to obfuscate the issue and prevent a real assessment.
The Obama administration failed to protect the integrity of elections through selective enforcement of federal laws applicable to voting:
This is the next battlefield for election integrity. Local officials are working to decide how or if to clean up their voter rolls, along with whether the public has a right to check their work. Counties across the country are resisting transparency. This has to stop. . . .
Two lawsuits, both filed in Virginia, show how Obama’s highly politicized Justice Department resulted in wildly disparate treatment of the same federal law that allows you to call your local voter registrar and ask to take a peek at their books. They demonstrate that despite candidate Obama’s promises to lead a transparent and accountable government, his administration showed an unwillingness to live up to those assurances. . . .
The Trump administration inherits a suite of laws designed to protect all voters. It should move quickly to enforce all statutes, including those that Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch did not like and, consequently, refused to enforce. In the meantime, groups such as the Public Interest Legal Foundation will have to hold the line, fighting in federal court to preserve the integrity of the election process.
While we know the problem of vote fraud is real, we do not know the full extent or impact of the problem. An investigation should illuminate some of these unknowns.