Roper: Vermont director of elections testifies to how easy mail-in ballot fraud is

By Rob Roper

At the Jan. 14 meeting of the Senate Government Operations Committee, Sen. Brian Collamore, R-Rutland, asked Vermont Director of Elections Will Senning about a woman arrested for election fraud in Texas. The story in question involved Rachel Rodriguez, who was caught engaging in “election fraud, illegal voting, unlawfully assisting people voting by mail and unlawfully possessing an official ballot.” Collamore wanted to know if similar actions, if they occurred in Vermont, could be detected and prosecuted.

For a specific example, the senator asked: “If I were to have filled out my wife’s ballot, and/or my son’s, which arrived without them asking for it … what security measures are in place now whereby we could even known that, let alone remedied it, and prosecuted me, quite frankly?”

Senning responded (watch the video at the 1:50:20 mark):

It’s 100% a fair question, Senator Collamore, and if you were willing to forge the signature of your wife and/or your son — so you fill out their ballot for them, put it in that certificate envelope, and sign their name for them in some kind of manner that you plan will not be noticed by your town clerk as looking too much like your signature … it’s likely that that ballot will get processed and that your wife and/or son would be checked off the checklist as having voted at that point. The most significant check there … is then if your wife or son showed up to vote on election day, their name would be checked off the check list because the clerks are very diligent about keeping track of who they’ve received a ballot back from. That’s where questions would start to be raised and the issue would start to be looked into at that point. We had instances of that this year. … But it’s really that one ballot for one voter that brings that to light at the time of the election. You can’t get the vote back, but you can at least potentially go and prosecute the person for voting on another person’s ballot.

This is problematic on so many levels.

Senning admits that if someone filled out a ballot for another person, it would be processed and counted. There is no signature verification in Vermont, so even if, as Senning said, the signature looked suspicious, odds are very much against any sort of challenge. Later he testified on another question about spoiled ballots, “Signed is signed, whether it matches your name on the official checklist on not.” (2:04:00 in response to Ram’s questions about names matching.) You could sign your ballot “Donald Duck” and it won’t be challenged.

The only real clue that something is amiss is if the real voter shows up on election day only to find out that a ballot has already been cast in their name. Senning testified, “We had instances of that this year.” We need to know exactly how many instances! But more importantly, this clearly illustrates that if someone fills out a fraudulent ballot in the name of a non-voter, there is no chance whatsoever the fraud would be detected. There is no mechanism in place to detect fraud of this kind.

Senning admits fraudulent votes were counted in this election: “You can’t get the vote back, but you can at least potentially go and prosecute the person for voting on another person’s ballot.” So, we had instances of detected double voting in one person’s name and an admission that the fraudulent votes were not — indeed could not be — removed from the total vote count. How many? And who was attempting to commit fraud? The voter on the checklist trying to vote twice, once by mail and once in person, or someone who stole the ballot of a legitimate voter? How are these investigations going and how many does Senning believe will actually end with a prosecution?

These huge gaps in security only address one example of potential fraud. The other things that the woman from Texas engaged in — bribing someone to vote a certain way, “unlawfully assisting” people to vote, etc. — could not be detected, remedied, and prosecuted either. How can we have faith in election outcomes when this is the case?

Rob Roper is president of the Ethan Allen Institute. Reprinted with permission from the Ethan Allen Institute Blog.

Image courtesy of TNR

7 thoughts on “Roper: Vermont director of elections testifies to how easy mail-in ballot fraud is

  1. You can fully expect this as long as the liberals control the process. Nothing will ever get better until we have honest and accountable elections, then we’ll see changes in the politics in this State and the nation.

  2. Hey, There was no voter fraud. And you should not be saying it. You all need to be sent to O Biden’s Camp For Re-Education to be reprogramed. NOW SIGN ZEE PAPERS !

  3. My vote will not be safe from being discounted until honest people insist on: maintenance of clean voter rolls, voter ID, voting by requested Absentee Ballot or in person, signature check, paper ballots (numbered?), counting machines not connected to the Internet, and paired partisan ballot checkers.
    I’d like an explanation why Vermont was one of eight states that had more ballots cast than there are registered voters.

    • Signature comparison is not a good way to validate a mail in ballot. Signatures change or are erratic. Additionally how many people are trained to evaluate handwriting?

  4. Bob Roper,
    Great reporting.
    Lifting the veil a little at a time

    Every election has a percent turnout.
    Historically, it is about 60 to 65 percent.
    That leaves about 30 to 35 percent of names “to play with”
    Some of these names are dead, or have moved away
    Some people almost never vote, according to records of past elections

    An evil actor could “vote” these names.
    All he needs is ballots and envelopes
    He might know a friendly printing shop owner who prints ballots and envelopes for various states
    He could harvest blank ballots from a multitude of places
    He could photocopy a ballot on similar paper

    The Secretary of State could print extra ballots and distribute them to polling places, to be used in case voters show up who have lost their mail-in ballots.

    A ballot was mailed to me, but I never got it.
    Maybe it was harvested

    When I showed up to vote, early morning, I was given a blue slip to sign, and then given a ballot, etc., i.e., extra ballots had been distributed

    What is to prevent some poll workers from helping out a struggling, but favored candidate, with these extra ballots?
    They likely would tip the scales in a close race.
    They could be quickly “voted”, during voting lulls, or during off hours, when no one is looking.

    During the recent national election, there were a lot of such phantom votes, may be millions of them, in swing states, many of those on videos.

    Quite a few counties had more people voting than were registered, and dead people registering and voting, which is close to a biblical miracle.

    That is what I call ENTHUSIASM on part of the dead.

    Some statistics experts have analyzed state voting records.
    Remember, these folks have masters degrees and doctorates in statistical analysis.
    They found major anomalies in the data, that could only be explained as being due to major ballot stuffing.

  5. Question:

    I understand the mailing out of ballots was done by an outside company. My understanding is state statute says it’s supposed to have been done by the town clerk. Is this true?

    I know people that have been off the registered voting list for Vermont for years and they received ballots. They had cancelled their registration in the town and registered to vote in a different state.

  6. We all know under the leadership of the turncoat Phil Scott and socialist james condon that as good as this sounds it will never be pursued

    this will be the same war cry they are pursuing against Donald Trump…

    after all shouldn’t we all believe there was no election fraud anywhere?

    I think everyone in America should be concerned about what took place in the presidential election and everyone should be calling their representation and asking for an independent investigation.

    Vermont and America are being destroyed little by little

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