Twitter Melted Down Over Three Million Illegal Votes
I recently became internet famous for a tweet (above) after having been identified as the source for a similar tweet by President-elect Trump.
Twitter blew up. I found myself wondering if I was really a Russian or Israeli spy. Did I really murder people in an armed robbery gone bad? Could I possibly be the man (or in my case, the toddler) on the grassy knoll?
Thousands of trolls, bots and haters beat those drums accusing me of all manner of atrocity. Several went so far as to say they would kill me if I released the numbers.
New Narrative
At first, I thought I had cut deep into a long-standing narrative that voter fraud doesn't exist and non-citizens don't vote. I quickly realized I had cut all the way to the bone of these myths.
I believe what happened with that analysis and that tweet was simply this, the narrative that “election fraud doesn't exist” changed.
The new narrative is how big is the problem.
In my opinion and based on my methodology, more than three million non-citizens voted. I've seen numbers election experts and academic studies ranging from 800,000 to 6,000,000. One is too many, but these numbers are shockingly large.
The question is now a matter of degree. How big is the problem? Why don't we know?
Data
In 2009, a group of volunteer election integrity researchers formed by True the Vote began the tedious process of building a process of gathering and updating voter registration records, augmenting them with voting records and geocoded addresses. The database now contains in excess of 180 million up to date records.
In an amazing effort best described as brute force, thousands of TTV's citizen volunteers analyzed records that resulted in thousands of duplicate records and registrations of dead people being removed from the rolls. In addition, TTV volunteers identified thousands of instances where individuals voted more than once.
AutoGov, a technology company I founded, partnered with True the Vote in 2013. The result of this partnership is a technology solution to analyze the nation's voter registration records to quickly and easily verify identity, residency, non-citizens, citizenship, age, duplicates, dead and felon status in real time.
It's Time
Comparing these registrations to voting records has produced results so troubling, I decided now was the time to speak out.
In one study done in 2015 with more than 20,000 federal voter registrations, 42% of the registrations were so flawed they could not be recommended for inclusion in the voter rolls.
Forty-two percent. Stunning.
Few times in American history has a single election brought so attention to our broken election system. One side says the system is rigged and fraud is prevalent. The other side challenges the actual counting of the votes in multiple states demanding expensive recounts.
Election integrity purists and analysts say non-citizens are voting in the millions while the establishment on both sides dismiss the whole thing.
Trust
Social media is ablaze with name calling and hate. We find ourselves in a place where taking a stand results in accusations and death threats. Without question, the time has come to find a trusted solution for the future of American elections.
Eligible citizens don't vote for two primary reasons – they don't like the candidates and they don't trust the election system.
If we were concerned with non-voting citizens, we would research the reasons people don't vote and seek to remedy those factors.
We suspect that voters and non-voters alike simply do not trust the election system to produce an accurate tabulation of the votes of eligible voters.
There is an incongruence between the concerns that people don't participate and the denials that fraud exists.
The American people are not stupid. They know something is wrong and therefore don't trust the election system, staying home by the millions.
It's uncommon to consider there are three things one can do with his/her vote – vote for, vote against or don't vote at all.
Millions of legal voters, not trusting the system, just stay home.
Institutionalized Fraud
In a recent video, True the Vote founder and Election Integrity expert, Catherine Engelbrecht, described how “fraud” has become institutionalized. [insert link]
Flaws in our election systems have eroded the public trust. We are forced to accept a federal court order that allows non-citizens to register to vote, yet prevents anyone from verifying citizenship. Some states require ID's to vote. Some states give IDs to anyone including non-citizens.
Simple Solution
It's really very simple.
Our opinion is we must fix the registration process, keep the voter rolls clean and secure the process of voting.
The registration system is broken. There are too many processes performed by disparate entities. Politics, partisanship rule a system that creates a lack of trust. To consider we don't verify identity, residency, age, citizenship and felon status is silly in an age when we can buy a car on the internet simply by placing our thumb on the home button to place a secure order.
Clean up the rolls. Lock the front door to prevent illegal votes by verifying identity, residency, citizenship, age and felon status. The technology exists to do this in real time.
The process should be further secured by digital assignment of a secure hash to link an ID specifically designed for voting to a specific ballot. The ID could be linked to the social security system and secured through biometric verification.
Technology Best Practice
Mexico whose election system is considered by many observers as a best practice combines citizen involvement with IDs linked to ballots. No ID. No vote.
Blockchain, the same technology used to secure bitcoin transactions, is a promising solution currently in use in places like Estonia. The technology secures transactions (ballots) with a high level of security and produces a transparent and verifiable result.
These are solutions that people can trust. Voting percentages in Mexico and Estonia are very high.
American technology and election expertise are extraordinary. President Trump should consider reaching past the partisanship and partner with True the Vote and the American people to create a trusted solution so we never again have to question the results of our elections.
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Gregg Phillips is the founder of AutoGov, a big data healthcare software company focused on eligibility, enrollment and data verification. Gregg designed a technology based process to gather, analyze and predict individual eligibility within very large volumes of data (“big data”). The software he designed – CaseVue – has analyzed and scored more than 40 million cases across many domains, saving millions of dollars in fraud avoidance by supporting fast, accurate decisions! Gregg has extensive experience in the highest levels of government and healthcare in the design and operation of some of the nations largest eligibility operations, fraud control initiatives and business process redesign projects.
