Former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani, a stong supporter of fellow New Yorker Donald Trump for president, appeared Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” program with Jake Tapper and backed up Trump’s claims the election “is absolutely being rigged.” Guiliani told Tapper that the Democrats could steal a close election in a state like Pennsylvania.
“I’m sorry, dead people generally vote for Democrats rather than Republicans,” Guiliani insisted.
The election being “rigged” and possibly stolen has been a theme of Trump’s for some time. Trump even said that if he did not win the Republican Party nomination, the system might be rigged. Early Sunday, Trump tweeted, “The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places — SAD.”
Guiliani defended Trump in his conversation with Tapper. “You want me to [say] that I think the election in Philadelphia and Chicago is going to be fair? I would have to be a moron to say that.”
The former mayor did concede that this would become important only in a close race. He offered Pennsylvania as an example, arguing that if Trump or Clinton carried the state by “5 points,” then such cheating would not change the outcome. But, on the other hand, it is thought that Pennsylvania might be very close, and any such voter fraud in Philadelphia could very well be decisive. When one considers that the 2000 presidential election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore was decided in Florida — with Bush prevailing by less than 600 votes out of six million votes cast, any such voter fraud could tilt the election.
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Only three years before Bush’s razor-thin victory in Florida over Gore, a mayor’s race in Miami was nullified by a judge due to widespread fraud. The fraud included a number of established cases of votes being cast by “dead people” — that is, by individuals who voted in the name of a deceased person.
This is known as “Tombstone Voting.” The Poughskeepie Journal in New York did an analysis of tombstone voting in 2006, and found that as many as 2,600 individuals had cast votes, despite being “dead.”
Liberal Democrats like to contend that voter fraud is not a significant problem in the United States, but election inspectors in Illinois who examined a governor’s race in that state estimated that about 10 percent of the ballots cast there were fraudulent, including several “dead” people.
The votes cast in a Tennessee state Senate race in 2005 included at least two “tombstone voters.”
Perhaps the most infamous episode of this specific type of election fraud occurred in Texas in 1948, in the U.S. Senate race between former Congressman Lyndon Johnson and Governor Coke Stevenson. When the polls closed, it appeared that Governor Stevenson had eked out a victory in the Democratic Party primary by 854 votes. (At the time, the Republican Party was just a shell in the state, and a win in the Democratic primary was considered tantamount to victory.) But Johnson supporters “revised” the vote count in Duval County, Texas, reducing Stevenson’s victory margin to less than 200 votes. Fortunately for Johnson, it was discovered that there were additional votes cast for him in nearby Jim Wells County, in Box 13, in Alice, Texas — enough additional votes to make him the winner.
The only problem was, these additional votes were clearly fraudulent, including many dead people who had apparently cared so much about this election that they rose from the grave to vote for Johnson. Voter 841, Eugenio Solis, later testified that there was no one else behind him when cast his vote at closing time of the polls. Yet, about two hundred more persons voted after him, as voters 842 through 1041.
Even Lyndon Johnson later joked about his “victory,” which included scores of dead people. In the popular joke, a boy was seen crying on the streets of Alice. When asked why he was so upset, he explained that his dad was in town a few days earlier, but had not come by and seen him. “But, Manuel,” the boy was told, “your father has been dead for 10 years.” To which the boy replied that he knew that, but that his father had voted for Johnson just a few days before, but “did not come to see me.”
In 1977, Louis Salas, an election judge, admitted to lying under oath about his role in the stolen election. “Johnson did not win that election. It was stolen for him,” he said.
It is important that voters can trust the outcome of an election. Otherwise, many Americans will not accept the results. Presently we settle our differences at the ballot box, instead of reaching for the cartridge box. Yet, a new POLITICO poll has found that 73 percent of Republicans think the election could be stolen from Donald Trump. The blasé attitude of Democrats, who dismiss concerns about voter fraud, only adds to that concern. Democrats adamantly oppose voter ID laws, for example, arguing that such laws only “disenfranchise” certain voters. And of course, fraud may be committed not only by ineligible voters casting ballots, but also by a fraudulent vote count, which is why safeguards against both forms of fraud are so important.
The concern by Republicans is not new. In 1996, Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole said that President Bill Clinton’s campaign was working to legalize Hispanic immigrants in time for them to vote for him in the election. “He’s granting citizenship to thousands with criminal histories,” Dole charged. “He doesn’t care as long as they’re going to vote on November 5.”
Dole added later, “If you are in this country illegally, you can stay in public housing, collect welfare, get free medical care and even invite family members abroad to come and join you. You might even be able to drive here legally. And with a driver’s license, you might even be able to register to vote under the motor-voter law signed by Bill Clinton. The possibilities for electoral fraud are just staggering.”
Presently, massive voter fraud’s effects upon presidential elections are to some extent contained in the state where it happens, because of the Electoral College. Not surprisingly, Democrats are more likely to favor the abolition of the Electoral College, preferring that the president be chosen by direct, popular vote. If this happened, such voter fraud in Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles, and other Democratic Party strongholds would most likely become even more influential in determing who wins the presidency.
And of what importance was that Johnson “victory” in 1948? Had Johnson been certified as the loser of the election — which he really was — then he would have never been in the U.S. Senate, and would have never been vice-president of the United States.
Then, Johnson would have not succeeded to the presidency after President John Kennedy was assassinated on the streets of Dallas, on November 22, 1963.
And that leads to the possibility that there might not be a wall on the Mall in Washington, D.C., bearing the names of 58,000 Americans.
