Does the United States need an election fraud investigation?

In “Basic Voting Principles,” Charles Corry outlined the conditions that we expect in our system of elections. These include the secret ballot, one man one vote, voter eligibility, transparency, votes accurately recorded and counted and finally, reliability.

He further outlines many issues with the integrity of the voting system in “Introduction to Voting Problems” This is followed with chapters by various authors outlining specific voting irregularities.

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Collectively, the Brennan Center for Justice, Minnesota Majority, People for the American Way summarize just some of the types of voter fraud as: double voting (ballot stuffing); dead voters; felon voter fraud; voter suppression; registration fraud; voter impersonation; vote-buying; fraud by election officials.

In an October National Review column, John Fund made a compelling case that of instances of voter fraud are swept under the rug. Certain organizations profess that voter fraud is trivial or non existent but evidence exists, as presented by Fund, that voter fraud is more common than the media reports.

Our own presidential election has had considerable controversy over voter fraud and election tampering. From allegations of rigging primaries to Russian hacking into the election networks, the news media has reported on these issues for months and they continue to grab almost daily headlines:

Potential rigging of the Democratic primary was reported by the New York Times in the July 2016 article “Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign.” They write:

Earlier this month, Reuters transmitted a report from the Detroit News that:

“Numerous voting machines in heavily Democratic Detroit showed a greater number of ballots than poll workers records said were cast in the Nov. 8 presidential election, the Detroit News reported on Tuesday. About 37 percent of precincts in Wayne County, Michigan, where Detroit is located, showed such discrepancies, the newspaper reported, citing records prepared at its request by the county.”

CNN reported on Dec 13 that the top Senate Republican have joined the growing chorus of powerful voices on Capitol Hill Monday calling for a bipartisan probe of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

These facts leave the American public confused or, as NPR reported in “The Russian Hacking Controversy, What We Do and Don’t Know” on Dec. 12:

“It's a narrative with too few solid facts to be definitive but just enough that anyone can feel justified in drawing his or her preferred conclusions.”

Do we wish to leave these allegations hanging for the politicians, their surrogates and the armchair investigators to cherry pick the authoritative journalism, to spin their agenda with continued speculation which only serves to undermine the public’s confidence in election results?

Or does our next president, who also complained that the elections are rigged, need to listen to the calls from the elected officials, the media and from much of the public to investigate all these allegations of election fraud?

Should the next president form an election fraud task force to confirm or refute these allegations; to make recommendations to strengthen the integrity of our voting process; to prosecute criminal violations of our election laws and to restore public confidence in the United States election process?

Surely now both sides of the aisle have an interest in saying yes.

John M. DeMaggio is a retired special agent in charge, and a retired captain in the U.S. Navy. The above is the opinion of the author and is not meant to reflect the opinion of the U.S. Navy or the U.S. government.

The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.