Election Season Gives Me Imaginary Relatives

The upcoming election has given me new relatives, all of them imaginary.  The Obama campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation calls my house on an almost daily basis, trying to reach people who don’t live there, like Cyrus and Hassan Bader.  But I’ve never heard of either of them, even though I share their last name.  The Obama people have also tried repeatedly to reach my 18-month old daughter Sarah.

I live in a liberal bastion, Arlington, Virginia, where high voter turnout favors the Democratic Party.  The Party hopes to achieve its “80-80 strategy” — getting Arlington voter turnout up to a record 80 percent, and getting 80 percent of those voters to vote Democratic.  Cyrus and Hassan may be imaginary, but votes cast in their name may enable the Party to reach its goal.  Imaginary voters have sometimes ended up on voting rolls as part of voter registration drives by the left-wing activist group ACORN, which has a long history of voter fraud.  (ACORN also hires felonsregisters voters using the names of minors, and registers the same voters under many different names). 

Protections against voter fraud have been weakened in Virginia as officials appointed by the state’s liberal governor, Tim Kaine, have ordered local elections boards not to check voter qualifications, such as proof of domicile, drawing protests even from liberal election officials.  People have boasted of voting in Virginia elections despite living out-of-state and being registered in other states.