New report shows problem with NC voter fraud

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Elections officials told the North Carolina General Assembly this week they found hundreds of instances where a person with the same name, birthday, and last four digits of their social security number voted in North Carolina and somewhere else.

“I did not think the numbers would be that high,” Sam Ibrahim Chairman of the New Hanover County Republican party said, but when he read the report he says he was shocked. “I would like to continue to examine that report and make sure everything is accurate and valid.”

A caution echoed by New Hanover County Board of Elections Director Marvin McFadyen saying, “That’s all we’ve seen is numbers we haven’t seen records or things of that nature to see what these occurrences are.”

The study commissioned data from 28 states about voter participation. It showed 765 examples of people with same name, birthday, and social, voting in more than one state and more than thirty thousand with the same name and birthday.

McFadyen says in his 15 years of experience most of these types of issues can be attributed to clerical errors.

“There’s really not much at this point to make a determining factor of what it is that we’re looking at,” McFadyen said.

Ibrahim says this is one more reason the state’s new voter id law was a smart move.

“I truly believe one fraudulent vote is too many,” he said.

McFadyen agrees, but says, voter fraud is far less common than you might think.

“I don’t think there’s enough to move forward to determine what effect it might have on New Hanover County or what effect it might have on the state as a whole,” said McFadyen.

The report seems to show instances of dead voters who cast their ballots though McFadyen also says in his 15 years on the job he’s never actually encountered one proven case of voter fraud.

However he says if they can prove a voter is registered in more than one place at one time they take action to remedy the issue.