Now, could you kindly please not destroy any of the evidence?

APR 3, 2014–Raleigh–In response to Wednesday’s (Apr 2) stunning Board of Elections disclosure of up to 36,515 voters suspected of committing felony election fraud, the Voter Integrity Project of NC, today asked Kim Strach and the state’s Legislature to enact emergency legislation that will prevent counties from destroying a critical piece of evidence.

“Every North Carolina voter signs an Authorization to Vote or ATV form before they were handed a ballot,” said Jay DeLancy, Executive Director of VIP-NC, “but unless those forms are subpoenaed, state record keeping laws will allow election officials to destroy this evidence in a few short months.”

According to Standard 8, Table 13 of Record Retention and Disposition Schedule for the County Board of Elections (linked here), the ATV form used in any Federal election is retained for 22 months, while local and municipal election forms are only retained for two months, making fraud investigations for local races even more challenging.

“Unless the Legislature acts quickly to change state record-keeping law, a great deal of evidence that could help prove organized election fraud during the 2012 election will be destroyed very soon,” he said.

VIP-NC has asked Legislators to change the record keeping law and require the ATVs to be scanned and permanently stored in each voter’s record, as is the current law for each voter’s registration form.

“Unless a Prosecutor somehow can obtain a signed confession from someone suspected of vote fraud,” he said, “those signed ATVs are the strongest piece of evidence a Prosecutor could ever have. Without it, there’s no case.”

According to DeLancy, District Attorneys rarely prosecute individuals referred to them for vote fraud. In 2013, the group earned national media coverage after providing the evidence that resulted in the State Board Elections making criminal referrals against five double voters from 2012 election.

No District Attorneys have prosecuted the cases, but the group used the news story to motivate Legislators to join the multi-state consortium (called “Interstate Crosscheck”) which resulted in yesterday’s announcement of massive vote fraud in North Carolina. .

“One of the convenient excuses that Prosecutors have for ignoring vote fraud involves this quiet little evidence destruction policy,” DeLancy said. “Now that we’ve uncovered it, we hope Legislators will adopt a long-term retention policy.”

The 36,515 North Carolina voters, suspected of fraud by voting twice in the same federal election all had matching first names, last names and DOB. Contained within that group 765 also had a last four of their SSN match. All are being investigated for voting in North Carolina and one other state.

“This is one tip of just one iceberg,” said DeLancy. “It shows one single type of election fraud has happened in one election, but without a modern record retention policy, we will never learn exactly how much other vote fraud has been happening in our state.”

###