Time for accountability

By Dr. Jon K. Lauck, a lawyer and teacher of government at Dakota State University's Sioux Falls campus. | Saturday, October 26, 2002

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SIOUX FALLS - As the recent voter fraud scandal has unfolded in South Dakota, Democrats have minimized its importance. They've consistently maintained the "few bad apples" theory. Such Democratic claims are implausible.

Since Democrats adopted the unorthodox and fraud-inducing practice of paying $3 per-head bounties for registration cards and absentee ballot requests, fraud is practically inevitable. The more registration cards and absentee ballot requests one "fills out," the greater the size of one's check from the South Dakota Democratic Party. And the greater dimensions of the voter fraud problem election officials must now untangle.

But don't take my word for it - examine what voting bounties have wrought. In a recent fraud case, the Pennington County sheriff opined that an individual gathered his bounties from the Democratic Party by copying names from the phone book or newspaper obituaries. At least six dead people were registered to vote. Compounding the odds of fraud, the Democrats selected a man on work release from jail to be the bounty hunter.

Nobody should be surprised that these circumstances resulted in the filing of five counts of forgery. There weren't more counts filed because authorities only decided to prosecute the "worst five." On Thursday, two Republican women in Fall River County discovered that someone had re-registered them in East River counties as Democrats, which, if not noticed, could have deprived them of their right to vote. Fortunately, one of the women worked for the state's attorney, who was alert to the fraud problem.

The now infamous Becky Red Earth Villeda Maka Duta (BREVMD, for short), who was paid by the Democratic Party, also makes the point. BREVMD collected more than $13,000 in bounties before she was terminated for voting "irregularities" that piled up on her watch. Again, the Democrats compounded the odds of fraud by choosing BREVMD, who had earlier been accused of submitting an election petition, which contained a forgery.

According to Attorney General Mark Barnett, at least 15 forged absentee ballot requests are traceable to BREVMD and she could be linked to as many as 1,750 absentee ballot applications. BREVMD claims, for the record, that the charges are part of a conspiracy, organized by Dan Quayle's nephew, to suppress Indian voting.

Since the Democratic bounty system is so ripe for fraud, the numerous reports of irregularities should not be surprising. The Mitchell Daily Republic reported that the Buffalo County auditor has turned over suspicious registration cards to the sheriff. The paper also noted that the Lyman County auditor reported that registration confirmation cards have been returned, which indicates that nobody existed on the other end to receive them. Pennington County is analyzing 230 voter registration cards for fraud (Aberdeen American News). In Shannon County, one in 10 of the 1,000 new voter registrations are being scrutinized (Argus Leader). The Watertown Public Opinion also reported that 50 voter registrations were under scrutiny in Roberts County.

Reports from Dewey and Ziebach counties have also caused particular concern. Most famously, one woman applied for absentee ballots in both counties 20 days after she had been killed in a car wreck. The problem applications in Dewey and Ziebach came in large envelopes from the South Dakota Democratic Party in Sioux Falls.

Only time will tell how many of the registrations and absentee ballot requests in those envelopes turn out to be problematic. But when the Democratic Party sends Dewey County 350 applications for absentee ballots - 10 percent of registered voters in the county - and indicates on the forms that all 350 will be out of the county on election day, something seems strange. The Dewey County auditor expressed her exasperation with the Democrats: "There's no accountability."

The Democratic Party maintains that only a "single person and a handful of documents" are at issue. Given the widespread accounts of fraud, this explanation falls flat. The FBI and the state attorney general do not generally launch a "massive investigation," as the Rapid City Journal has described it, for one person and a couple documents.

Only when the Democrats admit the size of the problem they have created by paying voter bounties can the problem be properly addressed. As a Democratic Party leader, Sen. Tim Johnson also needs to seriously address the fraud issue. The head of the National Democratic Party told the Argus Leader "We're actively going after the Native American community," and Johnson's campaign manager claimed that "Tim's campaign and the Democratic Party are working hand-in-hand to forward these efforts." Johnson told the Lakota Journal that he hoped "to secure space to set up a campaign office on each reservation in the state of South Dakota." According to Indian Country Today, Johnson "opened re-election offices on each of the nine reservations in South Dakota." But after the fraud scandal broke, the Johnson campaign denied it had any offices on the reservations.

As the Dewey County auditor would say, "There's no accountability." Given the size of the fraud scandal, it's time for some.