I didn’t used to believe in zombies. But after reading this report in the Washington Times about a reporter uncovering multiple instances where the dead were able to cast ballots in recent elections, I’m not so sure.

Election sleuthing by Brian Maass of KCNC-TV in Denver exposed multiple instances in recent years where dead Coloradans were still voting. A dead World War II veteran named John Grosso voted in a 2006 primary election, and a woman named Sara Sosa who died in 2009 cast ballots in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. Mrs. Sosa’s husband Miguel died in 2008, but a vote was cast in his name one year later. “This is the kind of thing you hear rumored, joked about in Chicago, that kind of thing,” Mr. Maass said during a Thursday evening broadcast. “Tonight, that changes. We did find voter fraud in Colorado that essentially waters down your vote.” At one point Mr. Maass‘ investigation led him to the Colorado Springs home of Sarilu Sosa-Sanchez, the daughter of Mrs. Sosa. The reporter received the cold shoulder when he asked the homeowner about her mother’s “voting” record. “Go talk to someone else,” the woman said. “I don’t have to clear anything up. I don’t know what that has to do with me.” The son of Mr. Grosso, John, was much more willing to talk. “I think that’s a disgrace,” he told the station. “The man is dead. He can’t vote. Somebody is cheating.” Administrators with the Secretary of State’s Office said the veteran’s vote may have been the result of an election judge’s error, but the station said that still didn’t explain why “dozens of others were still listed as active voters months and sometimes years after their deaths.” “Does this show the system is rife for fraud?” Mr. Maass asked the secretary of state. “It shows that there is the potential for fraud,” Mr. Williams responded.

Contrast Secretary Williams saying that there is “potential for fraud” with the most recent study purporting to show that voter fraud doesn’t exist:

NBC News:

Donald Trump has repeatedly alluded to fraud as a reason to introduce controversial voter ID laws, but a News21 analysis and recent court rulings show little evidence that such fraud is widespread. A study of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases in 50 states between 2000 and 2012 found the level of fraud was infinitesimal compared with the 146 million voters registered over the 12-year period. The analysis found only 10 cases of voter impersonation, the only kind of fraud that could be prevented by voter ID at the polls.

The Denver TV reporter found “dozens” of instances where the dead were still carried on the active voter rolls. Unless you want to make the claim that zombies are perfectly capable of voting, that means there are probably more cases of voter fraud in Colorado than the other 50 states combined.

In further analysis conducted this year, News21 reviewed cases in Arizona, Ohio, Georgia, Texas and Kansas, where politicians have expressed concern about voter fraud, and found hundreds of allegations but few prosecutions between 2012 and 2016. Attorneys-general in those states successfully prosecuted 38 cases, though other cases may have been litigated at the county level. At least one-third of those cases involved nonvoters, such as elections officials or volunteers. None of the cases prosecuted was for voter impersonation. “Voter fraud is not a significant problem in the country,” Jennifer Clark of the Brennan Center told News21. “As the evidence that has come out in some recent court cases and reports and basically every analysis that has ever been done has concluded: It is not a significant concern.”

Get it? Absence of evidence is evidence of absence — a fallacious argument when you consider the amusing idea that fraudsters would make it easy for investigators to catch them in the act.

A major problem that makes voter fraud possible — on any scale — is that registration records at the state level are horrible. Not only are dead people kept on the voter rolls, but also residents who have moved out of state as well as others who have moved into a different congressional district. Efforts to purge the rolls are met with fierce resistance from liberals. God forbid the registrars make a few mistakes and remove genuine eligible voters from the rolls. Meanwhile, thousands of potential fraudulent votes remain.

Is it true that voter ID laws couldn’t catch someone trying to vote with a dead person’s name? The need for voter ID hardly requires any more justification than this.