The District has failed to remove from its voting rolls as many as 13,000 former residents who years ago moved to Prince George’s County and cast ballots there, making fraud by voting in two jurisdictions as easy as going to the polls in their old neighborhoods, The Washington Times found in a review of records. “It happens a lot,” said Ward 7 activist Geraldine Washington. “I know of people who still vote in their old address after they’ve moved [out of the District]. I mean years after.” The biggest risk of having nonresidents listed on the rolls is not the risk of people voting twice themselves, but of others appropriating their names by the hundreds. They are easy targets for those who would cast votes in other people’s names in bulk, often by absentee ballot, after scanning the list for names of people who hadn’t voted in years and would therefore not show up to hear that their vote already had been cast.
Three potential cases of voter fraud have been uncovered so far. One voter acknowledged voting in both places; two others who no longer live in DC but remain on the voter rolls say someone else impersonated them and cast votes in their names – a crime made easier by the District’s lack of voter ID requirements.