October 5, 2006

Tennessee Election Coordinator Refuses to Check Rolls for Fake Social Security Numbers

Tennessee's election coordinator is refusing to check voter rolls to make sure that no one who is registered has a Social Security number beginning with an 8,9 or zero - numbers that would indicate a fraudulent registration or registration by someone who is not a U.S. citizen, making them ineligible to vote.

[Editor's note: Social Security numbers can start with a zero, despite the City Paper's report. See the full update at the end of this post.]

The Nashville City Paper reports in a story in its Thursday edition that election coordinator Brook Thompson of the Tennessee Election Commission didn't even know that real Social Security numbers don't start with certain digits.

The issue centers on Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN). Those numbers are given to immigrants, regardleSSI of status, for tax purposes. The ITIN numbers come in the same format as a social security number, but only begin with a nine.

A nine, zero or an eight are the only digits no social security number starts with.

[State Rep. Susan] Lynn essentially wants to know whether anyone in the state has registered to vote using a social security number that begins with those three digits, which would mean the voter had an invalid social security number and could not be eligible to vote. "To protect the integrity of our elections ... we ought to make sure that we haven't inadvertently registered anyone to vote who doesn't have a valid social security number," Lynn said. "And that's what I'm trying to find out."

Yet he controls the database that holds the evidence.

The election is in four weeks, there may well be people registered to vote who aren't actually eligible to vote, and the state's election coordinator won't do his job. A simple database search, which could be done in a matter of minutes, could help prevent voter fraud, but the state's election coordinator is dragging his feet.

Update: The City Paper is in error when it says no legitimate Social Security numbers start with a zero. Following up on a comment from a reader who says he was born in upstate New York in 1948 and his SSI number starts with a zero, I checked Wikipedia for more info about SSI numbers and was directed to this web page from the Social Security Administration, which indicates that is correct. The first three numbers of your SSI number is the Area Number and is assigned by geographical area. Currently, there are no valid SSI numbers with an Area Number above 772, according to the SSA.

That means that Rep. Lynn is right on one point - there are no valid SSI numbers starting with an 8.

I also checked Wikipedia for information about Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers numbers, and found that she's right - ITINs are issued to immigrants, both legal and illegal. ITIN's are issued by the Infernal Revenue Service, which issues them regardleSSI of immigrant status ( to resident aliens, non-resident aliens and illegals).

The IRS says an ITIN is "a tax processing number issued by the Internal Revenue Service" and is "a nine-digit number that always begins with the number 9 and has a 7 or 8 in the fourth digit, example 9XX-7X-XXXX."

More relevant: The IRS says ITINs "are not valid identification outside the tax system," which means, among other things, that they can not be used to register to vote.

Any voter on Tennessee's voter rolls using an apparent SSI number staring with an 8 or 9 should be immediately removed from the rolls and barred from voting this November - their registration is fraudulent.

I looked all this up in about 10 minutes, so it is all the more shocking that State Election Coordinator Brook Thompson didn't know this information. (The City Paper also should have verified the information it was given by Rep. Lynn before telling its readers, incorrectly, that SSI numbers never start with a zero. Rep. Lynn also should have double-checked. Mea culpa: I didn't check before I wrote the blog post late last night, and I should have.)

What is most troubling - more so than the Rep. Lynn, the City Paper, and myself not getting the facts right about SSI numbers starting with a zero - is that the state's election coordinator not only didn't know what SSI numbers are invalid, but that he seems reticent to search the state's voter registration database and remove all voters who registered using a SSI number that starts with an Area Number above 772, or that starts with a 9, the latter indicating an immigrant who is ineligible to vote using their ITIN number as if it were a Social Security number.

Voter fraud is a serious problem. It's time Brook Thompson acted as if he believed that.

Update: City Paper reporter John Rodgers emailed to say his story meant to say there are no valid SSI numbers starting with three zeros, and there will be a correction in tomorrow's edition. The story has been corrected in the online edition, but of course the print edition can not be corrected as easily.

I commend Brewer and Rodgers, an excellent legislative reporter, for even doing the story in the first place, and for correcting the error.

The debate in the City Paper's comments section about the zeros is sort of beside the point. What really matters is whether or not the state's top official in charge of ensuring clean elections will remove from the voter rolls any voter who used a fraudulent Social Security number on their application. That means any SSI number starting with an eight or a nine, or any three-digit number above 772.

If he fails to do that, he has left the door wide open to voter fraud and illegal voting by non-citizens.

Update: ACK weighs in...