Messin' with ballots: no matter what Democrats now say, voter fraud is real.(POLITICS)

ON April 15, a New York Times editorial declared that concerns about voter fraud--concerns that lay behind the Bush administration's firings of some U.S. attorneys--are a "fantasy." The Justice Department has investigated fraud allegations for five years, the Times wrote, and "has not turned up any evidence that voter fraud is actually a problem." The Bush White House was not only wrong to be worried about some prosecutors' less-than-enthusiastic pursuit of fraud allegations, the paper concluded, it was wrong to be worried at all about such a non-issue.

It was an extraordinary position for the Times, given that, two years earlier, the paper commended a group of Ohio lawyers who went to court alleging that the Bush campaign had engaged in massive voter fraud in the 2004 presidential election. The lawyers accused the Bush team of engaging in a variety of illegal acts, including a scheme in which top political strategist Karl Rove was said to have personally hacked into Ohio's electronic voting system, erasing thousands of Democratic votes. The lawyers had no evidence to support their allegations--the Times conceded that--but the paper said they had performed a "public service" by making the charges, because they had raised "concerns that many voters shared."

The Times's change of heart is by no means unique on the left. A few days before the 2004 election, Markos Moulitsas, the influential Democratic blogger/activist, warned about a "nationwide" wave of voter fraud. The day after the election, another influential Democratic blogger/activist, Josh Marshall, advised John Kerry not to concede, because "this whole contest has been too dirty, too marred with voter suppression, dirty tricks and other unspeakable antics not to press every last possibility [of challenging the results]." Lately, however, both Moulitsas and Marshall have railed repeatedly about the "bogus" issue of voter fraud.

What's going on? After all its worries about Ohio in 2004--and before that, Florida in 2000--why has the Left decided that voter fraud simply doesn't exist? The short answer is: It's useful. In 2000 and 2004, charging voter fraud was a useful way to question the legitimacy of George W. Bush's presidency. Now, in 2007, denying the existence of voter fraud is a useful way to question the legitimacy of George W. Bush's presidency. If the other guys are accused of doing it, they say, it's a scandal; if we're accused of doing it, it's a fantasy.

The only problem is, voter fraud is a problem. It was a problem when Democrats were touting it, and it's a problem now when Democrats are denying it, and it will remain a problem in the future. Three examples from recent years are enough to prove that concerns about voter fraud are not a fantasy, but a distinct reality.

* St. Louis, 2000-2001. It would be an understatement to call conditions at the polls in St. Louis chaotic during the 2000 presidential election. With voters' rolls a shambles, would-be voters crowded polling places, so much so that Democrats convinced a judge to order the polls to stay open three hours after the specified closing time. Republicans dashed to court and got another judge to order them closed after only 45 minutes' additional voting. The extension alone was not evidence of fraud, but a few months later, as the city was gearing up for a mayoral election, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found that one in ten voters registered in St. Louis were also registered somewhere else. All those registrations made for some eye-popping totals. "The number of registered voters threatens to outnumber the voting age population," wrote Sen. Christopher Bond (R., Mo.) in a Washington Post op-ed. "A total of 247,135 St. Louis residents, dead or alive, are registered to vote compared with the city's voting-age population of 258,532. That translates to a whopping 96 percent registration rate, the envy of even Pyongyang."

Then there were the 3,000 voter-registration cards submitted by ...