Absentee Ballot Fraud: A Stolen Election in Greene County, Alabama
In the 1990s in Greene County, Alabama, citizens, local political candidates, federal and state prosecu*tors, and a local newspaper joined together to fight absentee ballot fraud in the county, one of the poorest in Alabama. Unfortunately, liberal groups like the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Con*ference worked equally hard to undermine the effort.
Even as the investigation uncovered massive wrongdoing, so-called civil rights groups objected at every turn, alleging a plot to disenfranchise poor and minority voters. But in the end, justice prevailed with the convictions of 11 conspirators who had fixed local elections for years. The Greene County case is proof that absentee ballot fraud is real and not a cover story for an imagined voter-disenfranchisement conspiracy.
The most important lesson of Greene County is that absentee ballots are extremely vulnerable to voter fraud. The case shows how absentee ballot fraud really works, and it is a reality very different from the claims of partisans and advocacy groups. More broadly, the case shows how voter fraud threatens the right to free and fair elections and how those most often harmed are poor and minorities. This directly rebuts the usual partisan conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
According to the self-appointed liberal guardians of the poor, practically every effort to legislate against or prosecute voter fraud is intended to keep minori*ties and the poor from voting at all. Concern over voter fraud, say some partisans, is simply Republi*cans' cover to intimidate voters and raise obstacles to minority voting. Indeed, groups like the NAACP argue that racism and intimidation are the motivation for voter fraud prosecutions, and some prominent Democrats dismiss voter fraud as virtually nonexist*ent. As a result, prosecutors are intimidated from fighting vote fraud for fear of the political conse*quences, and elections continue to be stolen.
Greene County shows that these groups have it backwards. Voter fraud prosecutions do not intim*idate voters; what does intimidate them is the knowledge that voter fraud is routine and goes unpunished. Too often, not only is no one willing to take action against it, but the organizations that victims expect to help them instead take the side of the vote thieves. In contrast to the views of such organizations, an overwhelming majority of citi*zens support such common-sense and nonpartisan reforms as requiring voter identification when an individual votes.
Further, the Greene County case demonstrates that voter fraud need not be partisan in nature. Par*tisan conspiracy theories about election reform just do not apply to intra-party voter fraud in primary elections in heavily Democratic or Republican jurisdictions where primary results determine who wins in the general election. The perpetrators of voter fraud, particularly in small rural counties, are often political incumbents whose control of local government is threatened by challengers from the same political party. In Greene County, almost all of the candidates, incumbents and challengers alike, were both Democrats and African-Americans.
Although some partisans will cling to their debunked conspiracy theories, those who honestly seek to protect voters' rights must study the methods and means of voter fraud in order to combat it. Absentee ballot fraud in particular is difficult to con*trol. It is "the 'tool of choice' for those who are engag*ing in election fraud,"[2] as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded in its investigation of the 1997 Miami mayoral election. The results of that election were thrown out because of massive fraud involving over 5,000 absentee ballots.[3] With the growth of no-fault absentee voting and all-mail elec*tions, there is the real risk that fraud will affect more election results and even wipe out voting rights hard won by the Civil Rights movement.
The Greene County case is important, then, because it demonstrates the ease with which fraud*ulent absentee ballots can be used to steal elections, the tactics used to steal those votes, the complete failure of liberal advocacy groups to protect the interests of vulnerable voters who have been disen*franchised by fraud, and the value of vigorous law enforcement to protect legitimate voters' rights. It also points the way toward common-sense solu*tions to make voting more secure and increase public confidence in the electoral process.
The Setting
Greene County is located in the west-central portion of Alabama between the Tombigbee and Black Warrior Rivers in a region known as the Black Belt for its dark, rich soil.[4] Eutaw is the county seat. It was the first Alabama county in which political power shifted entirely to blacks after passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.[5] By all measures, Greene County is an extremely poor, rural county. In 2006, its population was just 9,374, making it the least populated county in Ala*bama, and its citizenry is 80 percent black. Slightly more than 10 percent of residents have a college degree, and the median household income is just $22,439, a hair above the U.S. poverty line.[6]
The county is governed by a powerful five-mem*ber board of commissioners. The commissioners are responsible for dispensing much of the $83,876,000 in federal funds-$8,606 per per*son-that flows to the county.[7] Indeed, the county government is the leading source of employment, contracts, and grants.
This kind of spoils system tempts politicians to misbehave. In 1996, Greene County declared bank*ruptcy because a bloated county payroll, extensive debt, and "improper and illegal spending" had exhausted county revenue. The commission's finan*cial management was so bad "that state auditors said they couldn't even audit the county's finances."[8]
The promise of spoils also led to stiff competi*tion for seats on the commission and to voter fraud. The Birmingham Office of the U.S. Attorney and the Alabama Attorney General conducted an extensive joint investigation of absentee ballot fraud allegations in the November 8, 1994, elec*tion.[9] By the end of the investigation, nine defen*dants had pled guilty to voter fraud, and two were found guilty by a jury. The defendants included Greene County commissioners, officials, and em*ployees; a racing commissioner; a member of the board of education; a Eutaw city councilman; and other community leaders.
All of these defendants were part of a conspiracy to manipulate the outcome of elections for local offices in Greene County and the town of Eutaw to protect incumbents and their allies from challeng*ers. Notably, almost all of the candidates involved, on both sides, were African-American Demo*crats-so the usual partisan conspiracy theories do not hold any water. The case is worth studying for that reason and because the methods the conspira*tors used were typical of absentee ballot fraud.
The Conspiracy
It became clear early in the campaign that the 1994 general election for seats on the Greene County Commission would be a close one. An incumbent commissioner, Nathan Roberson, had lost to challenger William Johnson by just 16 votes in the primary run-off election. After losing in the primary, Roberson requalified as a member of the "Patriot Party" to oppose Johnson in the general election.[10] Absentee ballots had been the key to victory in several of the Democratic primary races.
But even before Election Day 1994, there were signs that something was awry in the absentee bal*lot process. The local county newspaper, the Greene County Independent, reported on November 3, five days before the election, that as the county was "embroiled in one of the most hotly contested political races in many years," the number of absentee ballots being sent out by the local clerk was so high that they "could very well determine who the next county commissioners" would be. Oddly, many of the absentee ballots were not going to the registered addresses of the voters. Some 60 of the ballots in one district alone were sent to the same post office box.[11] Ballots were also sent to candidates' wives, the Greene County Democratic Executive Committee, and the Greene County Sewer and Water Authority.[12]
Absentee ballot fraud was not new to the area. In 1985, Spiver Gordon, who would emerge as a key player in the 1994 fraud, was convicted by a jury of absentee ballot fraud. Although the Eleventh Cir*cuit Court of Appeals found "that there was suffi*cient evidence to support Spiver Whitney Gordon's convictions for mail fraud arising from the mailing of fraudulently marked absentee ballots," his con*victions were reversed after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal mail fraud statute under which he had been convicted could be used only for schemes involving the deprivation of money or property, not elections.[13]
In 1994, the numbers alone were enough to raise suspicions. Greene County had 7,736 regis*tered voters. Turnout for the November 8 election was heavy at 62 percent, or over 4,800.[14] On the night of the election, over 1,400 absentee ballots flooded in-more than one-third of the total bal*lots cast.[15] More than 1,000 of the absentee ballots were mailed by just five people "who brought in suitcases of ballots to the Eutaw Post Office the day of election in 1994."[16] Thus, over one-third of all votes were cast with absentee ballots-far above the state average, which is normally in the single digits, and a red flag for possible voter fraud.
