Absentee ballots and voter fraud

The U.S. Supreme Court this week heard a challenge to an Indiana law that requires voters to provide identification at the polls.

Attorneys for a coalition of liberal groups argued that such a requirement is an overly intrusive burden on minority groups and the poor. In addition, “Democrats say the [ID] laws do not address the most prevalent forms of fraud such as absentee ballots,” The Washington Post reports.

But that’s a joke. You can bet that the same Democrats wailing over the voter ID issue would be lining up at the courthouse to scuttle any serious effort at tightening access to absentee ballots.

Which brings us to Nevada.

On Thursday, former Assembly candidate Gary Horrocks and his wife were fined $7,000, put on probation and sentenced to community service for a voting scam they tried to pull in 2002.

Back then, Mr. Horrocks, who owned a local tavern, entered the Republican primary for Assembly District 37. In order to better his chances, Mr. Horrocks hit up patrons at his bar for votes. If they didn’t live in the district or weren’t registered, no problem. He had change-of-address forms or voter registration paperwork on which customers could list the bar as their residence.

Then all they had to do was request an absentee ballot. Voila — the ballots were mailed right to Mr. Horrocks’ tavern.

Another trick was to register patrons at vacant lots within the district and then have them request their absentee ballots be sent to the bar.

You can take it from there.

But Mr. Horrocks apparently was not very accomplished at election fraud — he could muster only third place in the primary. He was charged with a crime after he told one too many people about his effort to gin up votes.

Has this case resulted in a tightening of voter registration or absentee ballot laws in Nevada? Or course not. In fact, Nevada continues to have relatively liberal absentee ballot laws precisely because Democrats in the Legislature prefer it that way. They believe it gets them votes.

And that’s more important than ensuring the integrity of the system.

Let’s hope the next scammer isn’t much more sophisticated than Gary Horrocks.