JOE BALLOT WARNING
Biden once took ‘vote fraud’ seriously
The Democratic Party line treats voter fraud as little more than a GOP fever dream — yet the party’s presidential candidate, Joe Biden, spent decades of his career sounding the alarm about it.
The Democratic standard bearer consistently shared GOP concerns about voter fraud during his 36 years as a United States senator from Delaware.
“Should Voters Be Allowed To Register On Election Day? No,” Biden wrote in an op-ed to a now-defunct Wilmington, Del., newspaper in 1977. He even chided President Jimmy Carter for proposing it.
A “reservation I have and one that is apparently shared by some of the top officials within the Department of Justice is that the president’s proposal could lead to a serious increase in vote fraud,” Biden wrote.
He has since reversed course. In an Internet conversation with 2020 running mate Sen. Kamala Harris this month, Biden said, “When you and I get elected, God willing, we’re going to push hard to make voting, Election Day, a national holiday so people don’t have to take off work. There should be same-day registration.”
Voter fraud has become an increasingly partisan issue in recent years. Republicans have warned that mail-in ballots, same-day registration and lack of voter ID laws create ripe opportunities for liberal mischief. Democrats counter that efforts to curb those things are part of a larger plot by the GOP to suppress voting from poor and minority communities, core Democratic constituencies.
Biden has derided White House fears of mail-in ballot fraud as “unfounded,” despite evidence of how easily mailed votes can be tampered with.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s,
Biden worked closely with nowSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to stiffen penalties for voter fraud.
In 1988 Biden introduced the “Anti-Corruption Act,” which McConnell co-sponsored. The bill would have enacted penalties for anyone who deprived anyone of “a fair and impartially conducted election process through the use of fraudulent ballots or voter registration forms or the filing of fraudulent campaign reports.”
Biden and McConnell tried again in 1989. Sen. Strom Thurmond
was also a co-sponsor of the bill.
“Current law does not permit prosecution of election fraud . . . This bill makes it a federal offense to corrupt any state or local election process,” Biden argued on the Senate floor.