The Donald Duck Vote

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

Two weeks before New Yorkers are scheduled to go to the polls for a primary election, an investigation by our Meghan Clyne has turned up evidence that the city’s list of registered voters is riddled with suspicious names. Among the findings: “Donald Duck,” “Elmer J. Fudd,” and “Jesus Christ” registered as voters in New York City. Dozens of voters have registered stating, apparently falsely, that their “address where you live” is a non-residential building – including places such as Macy’s in Herald Square, Madison Square Garden, and city public schools and courthouses.


Not all of the troubling findings she has turned up relate to cartoon characters and obvious abuses. The Washington lobbyist for Reform Judaism, Rabbi David Saperstein, was found to have been registered to vote simultaneously at his home in Washington, D.C., and at the Reform movement’s headquarters on Third Avenue in Manhattan. Ms. Clyne has found that persons have registered to vote using as an address the Episcopal diocese of New York.


It’s tempting to make light of these incidents as a few dozen oddities unlikely to make a difference in city elections where hundreds of thousands of genuine voters go to the polls. But apparently fraudulent or erroneous registrations can undermine public trust in the democratic process. In unusually close elections – say, Florida in the 2000 presidential election or the Washington state governor’s race last year – such irregularities could even affect the outcome.


At the least, it would be appropriate for the Board of Elections to abandon its current see-no-evil approach and scrutinize the voter rolls to investigate and root out obvious irregularities of the sort that Ms. Clyne discovered with a few days of digging. According to city voter registration forms, the law provides that false statements on such forms are punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 and/or a jail term of up to four years.


Yet prosecutions of election fraud or false statements in New York are rare and punishments are usually light. In the mid-1990s, three Westchester County political operatives were fined $250 or $340 apiece in connection with the misdemeanor of forging signatures on a nominating petition, according to press reports at the time. According to a report in New York Newsday, the 2002 Conservative Party candidate for lieutenant governor, Dan Mahony, pleaded guilty to voting twice, at two Manhattan locations, in both the 2000 and 2001 general elections and was fined.


As New York enters a new election season, surely there’s an opportunity here for a prosecutor – whether it is Robert Morgenthau, never one to shy from politically sensitive cases, as Senator Velella can attest; or Eliot Spitzer, a vigorous attorney general who has been asleep at the switch on this issue; or the incoming U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Michael Garcia – to take a careful look at our voter lists and bring cases if the evidence warrants it. It would mark the point that the integrity of the democratic process is worth guarding.

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


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