ANALYSIS/OPINION:

When most of us think of voter fraud, we consider specific instances of individuals gaming the system.

Voter fraud, however, is a broad, encompassing event, as Matthew Vadum notes at American Thinker: “[E]lection fraud, and electoral fraud, refers to the specific offenses of fraudulent voting, impersonation, perjury, voter registration fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, bribery, destroying already cast ballots, and a multitude of crimes related to the electoral process.”

For some reason, liberals and Democrats have not only ignored the issue, they’ve actively worked to dismiss the idea entirely. Liberal “think tanks” (sorry for the contradiction in terms), various media talking heads and Democratic leadership have all worked for years to convince the American public it doesn’t exist, while then working feverishly to thwart state-based efforts to secure the electoral system with voter identification laws.

Voter fraud is real, however, and is happening now as we prepare to vote in the most important presidential election of our lives.

That effort is to secure the voting system for citizens by making sure only citizens are voting. The Democrats argue it’s “racist” to demand ID at the polls. They know that’s not true, as evidenced by the fact that they don’t demand an end to ID requirements in any other aspect of living our lives. After all, if it’s racist to ask for an ID at a voting booth, why isn’t it so at an airport, or to get into a federal building, or to open a checking account?

Now with 34 days to Election Day, the reality of the continuing seriousness of voter fraud is becoming apparent.

With early voting underway in many U.S. states for the presidential election, a local television station in Colorado is reporting that at least 78 dead people are registered to vote on that critical swing state. And they’re not just passively listed. Breitbart reports, “One of the biggest voter fraud cases the station found was through the voting record of Sara Sosa of Colorado Springs. She died October 14, 2009, but ballots were cast in her name in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013.”

Now in Virginia, another critical swing state, a watchdog group has found at least 1,000 non-citizens registered to vote during the 2008 and 2012 elections, according to PoliZette.

J. Christian Adams at PJ Media notes, “That’s because of Motor Voter. Motor Voter, or the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, mandates that anyone who applies for a driver’s license must be offered voter registration. To register, they must merely mark a checkbox that they are a citizen and sign the form. It’s a yes-no question, and thousands are lying — just in Virginia.”

At the time, the Motor Voter Law, pushed by the Clinton administration, was decried as swinging open the door for election fraud, which, when I was on the left and a community organizer when this was implemented, it was jokingly referred to as “expanding the base.”

One of the more shocking recent revelations was the report that Arcan Cetin, the Turkish man accused of fatally shooting five at the Cascade Mall in Burlington, had voted in multiple elections despite being a non-citizen. Initially, both local and federal law enforcement confirmed to reporters that Mr. Cetin as just a green-card holder, and ineligible to vote. As that story generated outrage on social media, suddenly the local TV station covering the story announced a single unnamed “federal source” contacted them and told them Mr. Cetin was a citizen and could vote.

Some might wonder why that statement is to be taken as the truth and not the original, multiple statements by both local and federal authorities is not.

The ensuing controversy about whether or not that beast was participating in our electoral system at least, according to PoliZette, “led Kim Wyman, the Washington secretary of state, to band together with local auditors to propose requiring proof of citizenship at registration.” How nice of them to suggest something that would take a step toward ensuring the integrity of our electoral system.

In the meantime, as we deal with dead people and non-citizens striking at the legitimacy of our system, the Department of Homeland Security has disclosed that hackers have targeted the voter registration systems in more than 20 states.

While the registration systems have nothing to do with actual voting, the concern is the vulnerability of all of our systems. In most hackings, including the White House, State Department, the Obamacare website and the Democratic National Committee, the intrusions were not discovered until months, or in the case of the DNC, more than a year had passed.

One might note, with the federal government unable to protect its own systems, why should we believe that online voting is secure? And when that same government is working to thwart efforts that maintain the integrity of the electoral system by protecting it for citizens alone, our responsibility this year is more than casting our votes. It now must encompass being a watchdog for fraud in the aftermath of this nationally existential vote on Nov. 8.

• Tammy Bruce, author and Fox News contributor, is a radio talk show host.

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