Voter Fraud Strikes Home, Literally
Print This Post
The canvasser for Martin Heinrich for Senate stood at my door. He asked if “Jennifer Wangler” was home. “”No one by that name lives here,” I told him. “She’s registered as a Democrat to vote from this address,” the Heinrich canvasser insisted. “Never heard of her,” I replied. He showed me his clipboard, with a printout of the Democratic voters on our street. There she was, a complete stranger, registered to vote from our home address.
My wife and I have lived in the same house for 22 years. No one has resided with us except for some wonderful cats, none of which we have ever registered to vote. The previous owner lived in Pennsylvania and rented this property to a couple of English emigres whom we know. They are not named “Wangler.”
I called the Bernalillo County Clerk’s Office to report this situation. I was told that I would have to go to court to get it cleared up.
Bernailillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver
That couldn’t be right. That’s a crazy way to deal with voter fraud. How many individual citizens will take it upon themselves to draft and file a lawsuit and see it through, or pay a lawyer do it for them, just to remove from the voter rolls a person wrongfully registered at their home? Not too many, including me, a former attorney at that.
In that prior life, I had handled a challenge to Albuquerque’s voter identification law. I argued the law was riddled with holes giving election judges unfettered discretion and irrationally failed to require any identification of persons who could more profitably commit voter fraud from the comfort of their home using absentee ballots. We won the case in the United States District Court. I was entering retirement from my legal career just as the judgment was announced. A big downtown Albuquerque law firm lost the appeal and Albuquerque’s voter i.d. law stands as written to this day.
None of the voter i.d. laws on the books slowed down Ms. Wangler…or should I say “Jennifer Elizabeth Wangler,” Democrat, age 38, with a Hotmail account and a telephone number bearing an Alberta, Canada area code.
In Fraud’s Footsteps
I went personally to the office of the Bernalillo County Clerk. A helpful Election Coordinator pulled Ms. Wangler’s registration for me, minus the Social Security number and date of birth, redacted as required by law. I learned from this staffer that Ms. Wangler had registered in person in the Clerk’s office just a month before the 2008 Presidential election. She was registered by a temporary worker and applied for an absentee ballot. Ms. Wangler provided not only our street address but also the correct zip code. No data entry errors here. She prepared her lies in advance of standing at the desk in the Clerk’s office and fraudulently used our home address to obtain the ability to vote in New Mexico.
I called that Alberta, Canada phone number. Not working, if it ever was. An e-mail to Wangler’s Hotmail account has not been answered. I won’t hold my breath.
Why would anyone go to this trouble for such a low-return crime? How did our home address get picked from the tens of thousands of other residences? It makes no more sense than the case of Rosemary McGee of Albuquerque whose vote was stolen back in the 2004 Presidential election. That incident made national news and provided ammo to many of the arguments for stronger voter i.d. laws. Here’s what happened: Someone walked into McGee’s Northeast Heights polling place at 7 a.m., hours before her decades-long habit of voting mid-afternoon. The impostor signed Mrs. McGee’s name and voted in her place. When she went to vote later that day, McGee was turned away because the records showed she had already cast her vote. A grand total of one vote was stolen at a very high risk to the criminal. The fake voter was never identified.
Fortunately, the person who committed registration fraud using my home address has not yet voted in New Mexico. This Wangler person never submitted the absentee ballot application. That would have been a dumb plan. The absentee ballot coming through our mail slot would have alerted us that some mischief was afoot. But she could have walked into a polling place and voted, using an i.d. that gave a completely different address or none at all. The photo i.d. requirement does not require the address on the voter rolls to match the i.d. presented. New Mexico law actually permits a person to vote without any identification whatsoever. They need only verbally state their name, date of birth and registration address, assertions of fact that are never verified. Since Ms. Wangler’s name is on the rolls, she can step into a voting booth this coming November and vote like the rest of us, even though what she would be doing is illegal.
I can only speculate why this person committed a crime in order to register to vote, but never took it further than that. Maybe she chickened out. Maybe she was put up to it by someone on the street handing out money to transients and she left town as soon as she felt money in her pocket. Who knows? But the fact remains she has the ability to vote in this state, an ability obtained only by breaking the law.
Rude Awakening
So what, I asked the staff of the Bernalillo County Clerk’s office, can be done to remove Jennifer Elizabeth Wangler from the voter rolls? Answer: nothing.
That was an eye opener. I thought that the Bernalillo County Clerk could take some action to remove from the voter rolls a person who has fraudulently registered to vote. But even with undeniable, overwhelming proof tipping the scales the Clerk still has no power to act.
Nor is there anything that I can do. Contrary to the initial information I was given over the phone, I cannot go to court to remedy the situation. The Bernalillo County Clerk’s staff provided me with New Mexico Statute 1-4-24, which governs cancellation of voter registrations. Under that law it is Ms. Wangler alone who is given the right to remove herself from the voter rolls. Go figure.
But that law does empower somebody to act. Ms. Wangler could be removed at the direction of the Board of Registration–except for one problem.
Former NM Secretary of State Mary Herrera
Former Secretary of State Mary Herrera failed during her four years in office to perform the predicate duties to allow the Board of Registration to do its job. As Rob Nikolewski of Capitol Report revealed in November 2011, due to Herrera’s incompetence or intentional neglect of her duties, the United States Department of Justice has informed current Secretary of State Dianna Duran that any purge of ineligible voters cannot be performed until 2015. Secretary Duran is abiding by those instructions.
Duran has reported that the state’s voter rolls contain 100,000 to 150,000 ineligible voters. Add to the list someone named Jennifer Elizabeth Wangler who used my home address to fraudulently register to vote.
“And there’s not a darn thing anybody can do about it.”
That was the original ending for this story. It is what I was told at the Bernalillo County Clerk’s Office. The statute they showed me had me convinced. But then I found New Mexico Statute 1-4-22. It gives the Secretary of State the power to petition a court to remove from the voting
Dianna Duran, NM Secretary of State
rolls persons who are not qualified to be electors where they are registered. I went back and read the DOJ’s letter to Secretary Duran. It only tells her not to remove anyone from the voter rolls solely on the belief that that person has moved from the address where they registered. The DOJ is not prohibiting her from all actions to remove voters who should not be on the rolls for other reasons. If Duran wants to, she can petition courts to remove persons like Ms. Wangler and anyone else who is not a qualified elector in the precinct where they are registered.
Never give up. I placed a call to the Secretary of State’s Office. They said they would get back to me as soon as they complete canvassing the results from the June primary election. Stay tuned.
Posted under News.
Tags: Bernalillo County Clerk, Capitol Report, Dianna Duran, electons, Maggie Toulouse Oliver, Martin Heinrich, Mary Herrera, New Mexico Secretary of State, registration fraud, Rob Nikolewski, U.s. Department of Justice, voter fraud, voter i.d., voter identification
7:51 pm on July 7th, 2012
So, according to Obama’s DOJ, we cannot purge the roles of at least 100,000 indelible voter until after Obama’s out of office. I’m not digging this….but it just another proof of their tainted politics.
12:22 pm on July 8th, 2012
A very high impact story. Would you be checking to see if this person votes in any upcoming elections?
8:51 pm on July 8th, 2012
Yes.
10:07 pm on July 8th, 2012
How does someone go about checking to see if there address is being used by someone that does not live there
10:09 pm on July 8th, 2012
Go to the County Clerk’s Bureau of Elections and ask to see all registrations for your address. These are public records.
8:56 am on July 9th, 2012
Funny how a voter can’t be purged from the voters rolls, yet every time my college age son goes to vote, his name has been purged from the voting rolls and he is required to register again.
is it because he is a white male, registered as a Republican?
9:11 am on July 9th, 2012
Since when does single, isolated incident mean widespread?
10:07 am on July 9th, 2012
TO: Adrian Juarez For an obovious socialist Democrat ! How many voters are using YOUR address with or without your permission ????? Or
are you part of the ACORN clowns ready to register all individuals you encounter as was done 2008 ? ACORN clowns were at flea market in Las Vegas ,NM trying to register Mexicans from COLORADO to vote here .
Ya Basta con Burros
10:15 am on July 9th, 2012
@Adrian Juarez…
That is a perfectly naive question. I really don’t care if it is widespread or not. The fact of the matter is that it could result in a stolen vote.
Many elections have been decided on the difference of tens of votes over the years. So, the occasional “one in a million” can still affect election outcomes negatively if that one in a million was an illegal vote.
Millions of US patriots wearing the uniform of this great nation have died to preserve the legality of voting by US citizens only. Even one illegal vote cheapens the value of those who have died for the preservation of that right. I, for one, will not stand for it – and neither should you.
10:15 am on July 9th, 2012
An isolated incident puts a face on the nebulous 100,000 to 150,000 ineligible voters. You know what was meant.
10:29 am on July 9th, 2012
Interesting that President Obama won the New Mexico vote by 120,638 votes according to USA Today. Those ineligible voters could easily have turned the election. I’d like to see more faces on these 100,000 to 150,000 ineligible voters.
1:14 pm on July 9th, 2012
I think I’ve found the answer to the mysterious, “too-good-to-be-true” job offer. All I was required to do was to send my address for them to mail me info. Texted a couple of times to try and get someone to talk…”I’m sorry, I’ve had a stroke, and my voice has not recovered yet.” Thanks, Jim for your work.
1:31 pm on July 9th, 2012
I think you misunderstand the nature of the fraud. Most likely, no person named Wangler ever showed up requesting an absentee ballot. Absentee fraud is committed by insiders, in most cases, who exploit sleeper cells in the voter list — that is, voters who they know are unlikely to vote, either because the person rarely votes, or because names were placed into the voter list which don’t exist at all. I expect you’ll find that if you can inspect the voter registration cards for that time period, several will be filled out in the same penmanship, and were likely placed into the list by someone with inside access. Note that many states are also implementing “opt in permanent absentee” which means that voters who are “opted in” are automatically sent absentee ballots without filling out an application for them. Bogus names on the list, like this Jennifer Wangler, can be exploited, without even really sending them a ballot. Instead of ever mailing a ballot to these names, ballots are just placed directly into the drop box, using these names on the envelope.
Bev Harris
Director – Black Box Voting (.org)
2:17 pm on July 9th, 2012
Here’s the OTHER perhaps equally plausible answer – Jennifer Elizabeth Wangler COULD BE an American citizen ex-pat living in Canada. She might have been a child when her parents took her to Canada.
Her most recent American address MIGHT HAVE BEEN that very same house in New Mexico many years ago. Guess what, hon. According to the federal UOCAVA law, Ms. Wangler’s LEGAL voting address is the New Mexico house from which Mr. Scarantino now writes his first-person account, EVEN IF he never knew her.
When I was the Chief Registrar in Berks County, PA, we found several dozen identical sounding cases. This is an example why the press shouldn’t commit “election fraud” analysis in public. They too often know nothing of which they speak. Election law is HUGELY complicated. It’s not for amateurs like Scarantino, or even indeed the majority of practicing attorneys.
2:22 pm on July 9th, 2012
She could not legally register to vote in New Mexico from an address that is not where she resides at the time of her registration. None of the prior residents of our house for the past three decades are named Wangler. There is nothing complicated here. Under no set of facts could Jennifer Elizabeth Wangler legally register to vote using our home address.
2:24 pm on July 9th, 2012
Jim,
I noticed this when i was making some political phone calls a few years ago. At least 20% of the people I called (names, addresses, and phone numbers provided by SOS offce) had never lived at the registered address. In many cases the homeowners were long-time residents at the registered address. Why would somone go to all this effort to register incorrectly if not to fraudulently vote? thanks for all your efforts.
Steve K.
2:30 pm on July 9th, 2012
She may legally register at her last U.S. address, no matter how long ago that was. This is FEDERAL law.Perhaps Wangler is this 38 year old woman’s married name, and she may have last lived in New Mexico as an infant all those years ago under a different surname. You are NOT onto anything unique here, or even that unusual.
2:40 pm on July 9th, 2012
See the note at the end of the description of Line 3.
http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/elepdf/fpca.pdf
This is a federa form, which New Mexicao also must honor.
2:46 pm on July 9th, 2012
This is a perfect example of how a political party exploits the system so they can stack the elections.
And of course our U.S. Attorney General has already established that he is above the law and can do what he darn well pleases. And you know that his actions are politically tainted.
A number of us are outraged. Why aren’t so many more of us outraged?
2:57 pm on July 9th, 2012
If that’s federal law, it’s wayyyy too loosey-goosey for me.
The law and practice Lend themselves to fraud, as evidenced by the other posts here.
3:04 pm on July 9th, 2012
This federal law is LARGELY unchanged since the Reagan administration. Yes, it is now possible to “pre-apply” for several elections’ worth of absentee ballots at once, and that change was made during W’s term. To my knowledge, no changes during the “Obama experiment”. The most frequent liberalizations under this law happen during Republican admins, to make military voting easier.
3:06 pm on July 9th, 2012
Mr. Bellman: You are assuming there is such a person as Jennifer Elizabeth Wangler who is an American citizen living in Canada. We don’t know that to be true. Two, under New Mexico law to be a qualified elector in the precinct where you are registered, you must be live in that precinct. Wangler’s registration enables her to vote in state elections. Federal law does not supercede NM law on qualifying New Mexico voters. And, last, just to run down the speculative hypothesis for your argument, I looked beyond the last thirty years of residents of this house. No little girls who would have been 38 years old in 2008 lived here during that period of time. You really have to stretch the facts to fit your exculpatory scenario, and they just don’t fit. There’s also the strange fact that Wangler registered in person at the desk of the Clerk’s office. She was visiting the United States and just popped into Albuquerque City Hall as part of her sightseeing? Doesn’t add up to excuse a clear fraud.
3:14 pm on July 9th, 2012
You are right on this one element – if my scenario is correct, and Jennifer were a now-adult ex-pat with no adult history in NM, then yes, she is supposed to be a “federal voter”, who is only supposed to be eligible to vote for Presidential Electors, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House of Reps.
Here’s the rub – too many state registration software systems cannot differentiate between federal voters and regular ones. Initially, Pennsylvania’s could not. Now it can.
3:17 pm on July 9th, 2012
But either way, your core objection – that someone unknown to you is registered at your address – is a scenario that repeats itself tens or hundreds of thousands of times nationwide. Not at all uncommon.
3:20 pm on July 9th, 2012
Here’s another one equally disturbing. If a homeless man living in a cardboard box under a bridge desires to register, he is allowed to use the address of the house nearest his carton as his legal voting address.
Like that one?
3:27 pm on July 9th, 2012
Actually, I don’t. But thanks for enlightening us. I intend to look into some of the scenarios you raise.
3:44 pm on July 9th, 2012
There is a scenario that ALSO puts facts and governmental systems into conflict. The same federal law, UOCAVA requires registration and application for the absentee ballot to BOTH be covered by the Federal Post Card Application. It is not legal to require the two forms, for overseas voters. BUT some government systems and software REQUIRE the registration card that federal law says you CANNOT require. So what happens?
A clerk (temporary?) fills out the registration form and (hopefully) attaches the federal post card form onto it. Maybe she does, maybe she forgets. On the other hand, I don’t know if you had ACORNs without oak trees in 2008, but my area sure did in 2004. Those zealots cranked out more bogus registration forms than you can shake a stick at. We caught the vast majority of garbage, but perhaps thousands snuck through. They have now matured as unvoted records that they are being purged. How many “Bruce Springsteen”‘s or “Donald Ducks” or “John Kerrys” is one 350,000 population Pennsylvania county supposed to have?
4:41 pm on July 9th, 2012
My daughter is registered to vote from my address and is registered in Texas. She wrote to the BCC to have her name removed here 4 years ago. We still get unsolicited absentee notices in her name.
Back in the 70′s we had a rule that worked very well. If you did not vote in a certain number of elections you had to re-register. Our brain dead politicians can’t employe something as easy as this? Guess these are the same ones who went to schools where a kid could skip class for two weeks and nobody knew.
5:41 pm on July 11th, 2012
Regarding Fsm_47′s post: Our politicians are not brain-dead. They want it this way. They run a fraudulant voting ring everry election and need a ready pool of registrations from which they can steal names to ghost-vote. That’s how the Democrat party has run and robbed this state forever.
3:19 pm on July 12th, 2012
The system Fsm_47 advocates was made illegal by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. No state is allowed to purge merely for failure to vote. Failure to vote PLUS some indication that the voter’s address is no longer correct can START a process leading to purging, but it can take up to 9 years.
Yes, this creates an OPPORTUNITY for voter fraud. No one should be taken seriously if they deny that opportunity exists. The problem is PROOF. The “crime” is seldom even detected when it DOES happen, is subject to non-prosecution discretion, and is HORRIBLY difficult to prove to the criminal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt”.
2012 will be the crucible. Will vote patterns change? And how mant LEGAL voters will be turned away at the attempt to prevent unproven “crimes”?
3:34 pm on July 12th, 2012
Mr. Bellman, to continue our exchange, I have learned that Jennifer Wangler was registered in 2006 at another New Mexico address, prior to registering at my address. That eliminates the possibility of her using my home as her last US address before leaving the country. Thoughts?
11:22 am on July 18th, 2012
To Barbara Ralph: Yes, it IS because he is a white male, registered as a Republican. The voter fraud in NM is perpetrated by the Democrat Party exclusively. It is the way they have always operated and the way they will always operate because it works. They can steal any election they want to by doing it. And since NM’s laws are so lax there is very little that can be done to them.
And because former Sec State Mary Herrera cooperated with the corrupt Obama administration by not requesting permission to purge the rolls as she should have (wonder why?), we are stuck with these thousands of improperly registered Democrats until 2015, well after the 2012 election.
However, the current Sec State should instruct all the county clerks in writing to lecture all their poll workers to check anyone coming to vote against the list of improperly registered voters. She should send out the list to all of them with the stern warning that their election and their office will be challanged if they allow any of these improperly registered but not yet removed voters to illegally vote. We CAN stop the Democrat Party’s ongoing crime spree in NM if our current crop of elected Republican officials wil ACT instead of just opening the door so Democrat criminals can enter to continue their crimes.
9:58 pm on November 1st, 2012
I am in the exakt same situation. Apart from that Mr. Fred Mason is a Republican. I have tried to get him off my address since two elections ago, if I remember right. Hope you find a solution, and posts it. I am sick of getting his mail.