Vote Fraud

The federal indictment of State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo has led to varied reactions in South Philadelphia, but surprise has not been one of them. This has happened before. Fumo lives in the Spring Garden section of the city, but he grew up in South Philadelphia, has his district office in South Philadelphia, and helped set up the controversial Citizens' Alliance for Better Neighborhoods in South Philadelphia as well. He has pleaded not guilty. But if he is found guilty, he will join eight other elected and appointed public officials who were convicted of crimes from the 1970s to the 1990s in the neighborhood that old-timers still call "downtown.

If you want to register to vote, simply providing your name and address won't get it done anymore. In keeping with new federal regulations, Pennsylvania and New Jersey now are requiring new registrants to provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number as proof of identity. This information, when fed into state and federal computer databases, allows local governments to guard against duplicate and fraudulent registrations. "It's something new, and there's always potential for problems with something new," said Bob Lee, voter-registration administrator for Philadelphia.

A year after Ukraine's Orange Revolution captured the world's attention and lifted the hopes of this nation, growing numbers of supporters, observers and critics are concerned the country is drifting toward failure. Campaigning opened last week for March parliamentary elections that will determine who runs the country. But polls show the party of President Viktor A. Yushchenko, who galvanized demonstrators in the street to defeat the remnants of Soviet autocracy last year, is seen as only the third-most-popular option.

IVOTED IN Germantown on Election Day (I have since moved) - and I didn't notice any paid "crack addicts" voting as Mr. Barclay referred to in his Jan. 10 letter. I didn't notice any buses out front full of over-eager voters ready to go on to the next polling stop and - surprise surprise - they only let me vote once. What I did notice were hard-working men and women checking for valid IDs and voter-registration cards, doing signature checks from where I signed in to where I had applied for my voter card.

AS I LISTENED to Democrat after Democrat cry about fraud in the Ohio election, I was reminded of "being careful what you ask for - you just might get it. " It amazes me to listen to the whining and complaining about an election in a state that John Kerry lost by well over 100,000 votes. There is no solid evidence of any real irregularities, yet we hear from Sheila Jackson-Lee and Maxine Waters about "disenfranchisement. " Well Ms. Lee and Ms. Waters, I voted legally in Philadelphia on Election Day. Was it fair that my vote was disenfranchised by the crack addict the Dems paid to vote?

When the ATM asks whether I want a receipt, I usually say no. When a Web site wants my credit card number, I usually say yes. When I pay bills online, there is no paper record of the transaction. In my failure to demand physical evidence when money changes hands, I am not very unusual. Most Americans now conduct at least some of their financial transactions without paper, or at least sleep happily knowing that others do. Yet when it comes to voting - a far simpler and more straightforward activity than electronic bank transfers - we suddenly become positively 19th-century in our need for a physical record.

Delaware County officials announced a criminal investigation yesterday into 61 cases of alleged fraud involving voter registration and absentee ballots. They promised tough enforcement of election laws. "I will use every resource available to prevent further fraud against any member of this community," District Attorney G. Michael Green said at a news conference in Media. Thirty cases involved forgery of voter-registration applications, Green said. Alleged victims included a Democratic committeewoman from Springfield Township, who found that someone had reregistered her as a Republican.

Early last month, Pennsylvania Republicans purchased an official list of about 130,000 people who had registered to vote in Philadelphia in the previous six months. They mailed letters to each of the 130,000, urging them to consider voting Republican. Then they sat and waited to see what would happen. Within weeks, about 10,000 of the letters had come back marked "Return to sender" because there was "no such number" or no one by the voter's name living at the address on the envelope.

Daily News: It's the partisan paper I was floored by your irresponsible editorial (Nov. 17). Where does Al Gore get the authority to dictate to Florida the terms of their election? Florida law allows hand counts only when there is a mechanical problem or evidence of vote fraud. Hand-counting creates tremendous opportunities for vote fraud itself. So the Florida secretary of state was in complete compliance with the law by rejecting these hand counts, and a Democratic judge upheld her action.

For many years there has been a famous phrase that derives from the 12-step recovery movement. It refers to a thing that is very big, and obvious, and of crucial importance, that people around it refuse for whatever reason to acknowledge. It's called "the elephant in the living room. " There is an elephant in the living room in the Florida story. Actually, it's a donkey. And actually, there are a number of them. When the story of the Florida recounts and hand-counts and court decisions is reported on TV and in the newspapers, the journalists uniformly fail to speak of the donkey in the living room.