1. Every specific incident mentioned in the National Review article was either (a) an absentee voting scam or (b) an act of fraud by an elections official. I completely agree that we should crack down on absentee voting fraud. Strangely, the Republicans running the show in NC disagree and want to make it easier. (b) is already a crime and gets punished fairly harshly when discovered.
2. Here is more comprehensive discussion of the NC situation.
http://www.wral.com/state-elections-officials-seek-tighter-security/13533579/ I don't understand the import of this database search that shows some NC voters have the same names and birthdates as voters enrolled in other states. The mere fact that 35,000 people have doppelgangers in other states doesn't mean much without context, and it certainly doesn't mean that 35,000 people committed felony voter fraud in NC (which is the conclusion the Republican running the committee immediately jumped to, naturally). If 5,000 (or even 500 or 50) of them were all the same name and same birthdate, that might mean something sinister. Just the fact that there are 35,000 one-to-one matches does not
necessarily mean anything. In a country of 300,000,000 + people there are bound to be a lot of matches of this kind.
To see what I mean - just search your name on facebook. I just did a search for my first and last name on Facebook and it came back with more than 1,000 hits. My name is not all that common or uncommon, I bet a guy named Smith or Jones would get multiples of the hits. I scrolled down the list a bit and just from the photos, most of those dudes are within 10 years of being my age. That's just dudes on Facebook. Furthermore, I googled "number of babies born in [my birth year]" and divided by 365 - there were more than 8,000 kids born on the same day as me. The chances of there being a registered voter with my name and birthdate somewhere in this country outside NC are pretty good.
