[Vision2020] vote early vote often

Tue Nov 4 08:43:55 PST 2008

Some Georgians Suspected Of Voting Twice
Monday, November 3, 2008 — updated: 5:37 am EST November 4, 2008

ATLANTA — Georgia's Secretary of State has launched a full
investigation and may seek criminal charges against three Georgia men
who appear to have early-voted twice.

"This is extraordinarily disturbing," said Secretary of State Karen Handel.

A team of investigative journalists from WSB-TV in Atlanta, WFTV in
Orlando and WFTS in Tampa and WCPO in Cincinnati compared Georgia's
voter rolls with those in Florida and Ohio and found more than 100,000
people who appear to be registered to vote in more than one state,
with no government oversight to catch it.

WSB-TV Channel 2 tried to find Thomas Habel at the home where he's
registered to vote in Hartwell, Georgia, but was unable to locate him.

That's because he was spending time at his other home in Marco Island,
Florida. Before he left for the Sunshine State, according Georgia's
Secretary of State, Habel early-voted at the Hart County elections
office.

Chief registrar Elizabeth Forbes says she knows Habel and saw him cast
his ballot. She even gave him a sticker. State records confirm Habel
voting on October 1, 2008, but Florida records show him voting there
on October 25.

"Oh, then that's not good," said Forbes when she saw both voting
records with Habel's name on them.

Contacted at his Florida home Habel admitted voting in Florida at the
Marco Island library, but says he doesn't recall voting in Georgia.

"Somebody would remember if they voted twice," Habel insisted. "I went
and got a ballot for my wife she called me and said she forgot to
vote, she was down there and I went in there and I signed for it."

The registrar confirms Habel did that, too. His wife has already
mailed in her Georgia absentee vote.

A check of Georgia's master voter rolls revealed more than 42,000
people who also appear to be registered in Florida. WSB-TV Channel 2
found three who appear to have double voted, which is a felony.

"Shocking, it's really shocking," said voter Kelley Johnson. "I
wouldn't think to do something like that."

But Johnson could vote in two states.

The college student has an absentee ballot from DeKalb County, even
though she voted in Daytona Beach, Florida.

"Two days after I voted, my absentee ballot came in the mail,"
explained Johnson. "I was just shocked, it had my little sticker, 'I'm
a Georgia voter' on there."

WSB-TV Channel 2 found eight people who voted in Florida and received
absentee ballots from Georgia. Another three voters who cast ballots
in Ohio could have voted in Georgia.

"Because Ohio's a swing state, I'm not from here, I'm from Atlanta, so
I re-registered in Ohio so we could possibly have a chance," admitted
Lauren Arnone.

Arnone received her Cobb County ballot by mail, but vowed not to use
it, even though she could.

"Something should be fixed about this because this can sway an
election," said Arnone.
Georgia Secretary of State Handel agrees.

"Does our system just trust that people won't vote twice?" asked
Handel. "From the federal level, yes pretty much."

There is no federal database to track voter registration and no laws
obligating voters to notify their old state when they register in a
new one.

"It's an extremely high potential for (voter fraud)," said Handel.

But she said right now the states have no capacity to compare their lists.

"You vote where you live," said Handel. "You don't get to pick and
choose based on what is a battleground state, so that's very
disturbing and we will be looking at every single name on that list."

Her office will work together with Florida and Ohio to verify WSB-TV
Channel 2's data; a total of 112,000 people who might be double
registered.

"It's very easy isn't it? You could potentially vote in, if we had
worked it we could have voted in many places many times probably,"
said Aaron Bashore, who received two ballots.

People who simply got ballots in both places have not committed a
crime, but Handel says voters like Tom Habel should beware.

"Anyone who votes twice is undermining the core of our democratic
process that is serious and we will pursue this to the fullest
extent," said Handel.

For the larger list of 112,000 voters, WSB-TV Channel 2 was only able
to verify their first, middle and last name and dates of birth; some
of them could turn out to be different people with the exact same
information.

The Secretaries of State can match them by social security number and
if they wait until after the election, they will have a complete list
of how many of them voted and how many times.