Hans A. von Spakovsky, writing at the corner, brings us more news of something which is supposed to be an imaginary problem. Hans was previously a member of the board of elections in Fairfax County, Virginia, and has logged some hours of direct experience with voter fraud.

In June, I wrote about how the U.S. Justice Department was totally uninterested in investigating or prosecuting possible non-citizens who had illegally registered and voted in Fairfax County, Virginia, where I formerly was a member of the electoral board. While I was still on the board in 2011, we sent a letter to both the Justice Department and the county prosecutor, Raymond F. Morrogh (D.) informing them that in checking with the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, we discovered 278 registered voters who, when they got their driver’s license, informed the DMV that they were not U.S. citizens; 117 of them had actually voted in multiple elections. Registration and voting by non-citizens are serious violations of both state and federal law.

Apparently the problem didn’t fade away after that. The same board has now done another spot check and found 17 people who voted in both Fairfax and Montgomery counties in the same election. And before the usual liberal scoffers start on the typical lines of attack, these were not cases of people with similar names or who had recently moved. These are cases of individuals where the two registration records had the same first, middle and last names, dates of birth and … social security numbers. If that’s a coincidence we need a new definition of the word.

One thing which Democrats say about voter fraud is certainly true… there are relatively few verified cases of it as a percentage of the total number of voters. But as cases like this demonstrate, that situation is almost entirely created by the fact that pretty much nobody is looking for it. It’s a ludicrously easy crime to commit, and almost impossible to be caught at since most places lack the resources – to say nothing of the interest – to discover it. But when people do actually invest the effort, as was done in Fairfax County, a different story emerges.