The myth of voter fraud

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There is almost no voting fraud in America, and none of the lawmakers who claim there is have ever been able to document any but the most isolated cases.



In Kansas, the secretary of state, Kris Kobach (who also wrote Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law), pushed for an ID law on the basis of a list of 221 reported instances of voter fraud in Kansas since 1997.


Even if that were true, it would be an infinitesimal percentage of the votes cast during that period, but it is not true.


When The Wichita Eagle looked into the local cases on the list, the newspaper found that almost all were honest mistakes: a parent trying to vote for a student away at college, or signatures on mail-in ballots that didn’t precisely match those on file. In one case of supposed “fraud,” a confused non-citizen was asked at the motor vehicles bureau whether she wanted to fill out a voter registration form, and did so not realizing she was ineligible to vote.



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/opinion/the-myth-of-voter-fraud.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
 
The most comprehensive study so far on voter fraud largely dismisses its existence.


A report by the bipartisan United States Election Commission concluded there was "little polling place fraud," including voter impersonation, "dead" voters, noncitizen voting, and felon voters.


The main abuses were absentee-ballot fraud and efforts to intimidate voters on Election Day.


None of this will be cured by photo IDs when voting.


Think about it. Do we really believe people are lying and cheating their way to the ballot box?



http://www.minnpost.com/community_voices/2009/02/09/6398/the_myth_of_voter_fraud
 
In The Myth of Voter Fraud, Lorraine C. Minnite presents the results of her meticulous search for evidence of voter fraud.


She concludes that while voting irregularities produced by the fragmented and complex nature of the electoral process in the United States are common, incidents of deliberate voter fraud are actually quite rare.


Based on painstaking research aggregating and sifting through data from a variety of sources, including public records requests to all fifty state governments and the U.S. Justice Department, Minnite contends that voter fraud is in reality a politically constructed myth intended to further complicate the voting process and reduce voter turnout.


She refutes several high-profile charges of alleged voter fraud, such as the assertion that eight of the 9/11 hijackers were registered to vote, and makes the question of voter fraud more precise by distinguishing fraud from the manifold ways in which electoral democracy can be distorted.


Effectively disentangling misunderstandings and deliberate distortions from reality, The Myth of Voter Fraud provides rigorous empirical evidence for those fighting to make the electoral process more efficient, more equitable, and more democratic.





http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100774960
 
If nothing else, Secretary of State Dianna Duran deserves credit for getting to the bottom of that age-old, oft-repeated New Mexico folk tale about dead people voting.


Not so much, it turns out.


And Duran can prove it, too.


Once in office, she and her staff have taken the state's voter list, torn it apart, put it back together and in the end, found almost no voter fraud in New Mexico. From the 64,000 voter registration records she once referred to state police as possible cases of voter fraud, we are down to 100-plus voters apparently registered illegally.


Of those "illegally" registered, 19 possible non-citizens might have cast a ballot they should not have. Another 641 people, now believed to be deceased, remain on the rolls, although there is scant evidence they are voting.


That's out of 1.1 million registered voters, by the way.


Duran is no dummy, either. She knows that after her loud shouts about crooked voters, the investigation has turned up next to nothing (we're waiting, by the way, to find out how much it has cost).


No wonder, then, that her interim report contains a strike at possible critics: "To those who say that vote fraud (if it does exist) is 'insignificant,' our answer is that no instance of vote fraud, or ineligible registration, or ineligible voting, is now, or ever will be 'insignificant' to this office.


Every single vote cast by an ineligible voter cancels and invalidates a vote cast by a legal voter, and leaves that law-abiding citizen completely disenfranchised. It may also alter the outcome of an election. That is the sober reality of the electoral system."

And she's right. No one wants ineligible voters casting ballots.


Voting is as precious a right as we have and must be protected.


Just as clearly, though, citizens must not be disenfranchised.


Make no mistake, disenfranchisement is the goal — that's the math Republicans like. Here's how it works: more voters and bigger turnouts favor Democrats; fewer voters and smaller turnouts favor Republicans.


It's a long-acknowledged strategy of Republican operatives, then, to restrict access to the polls.


Democrats, meanwhile, want to register everyone and increase voter turnout. It's how the parties roll.





http://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/Our-view-Look-elsewhere-for-voter-fraud
 
Citizenship requirements have the potential to affect millions of Americans, including low-income and women voters.


According to research from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University of Law, 13 million individuals do not have ready access to documentation, including passports, naturalization papers, or birth certificates; 12 percent of citizens earning less than $25,000 per year do not have ready access to documentation; and less than half (48%) of voting age women with ready access to citizenship documents have them with current, legal name.


"Citizenship bills are even more devastating than the ID bills; they hit a lot more people," Neil Bradley, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project, told the AP.


Georgia, like Texas and South Carolina, will have to clear election changes with the DOJ under the Voting Rights Act.



The risk of voter disenfranchisement stemming from voter ID is much more real that any voter fraud the laws are meant to prevent.





http://www.projectvote.org/in-the-news/408-gop-pushes-voter-id-bills-in-the-south-facing-south.html
 
* Fraud by individual voters is both irrational and extremely rare.
* Many vivid anecdotes of purported voter fraud have been proven false or do not demonstrate fraud.
* Voter fraud is often conflated with other forms of election misconduct.
* Raising the unsubstantiated specter of mass voter fraud suits a particular policy agenda.
* Claims of voter fraud should be carefully tested before they become the basis for action.



Fraud by individual voters is both irrational and extremely rare.


Most citizens who take the time to vote offer their legitimate signatures and sworn oaths with the gravitas that this hard-won civic right deserves.


Even for the few who view voting merely as a means to an end, however, voter fraud is a singularly foolish way to attempt to win an election.


Each act of voter fraud risks five years in prison and a $10,000 fine - but yields at most one incremental vote. The single vote is simply not worth the price.


Because voter fraud is essentially irrational, it is not surprising that no credible evidence suggests a voter fraud epidemic.


There is no documented wave or trend of individuals voting multiple times, voting as someone else, or voting despite knowing that they are ineligible.


Indeed, evidence from the microscopically scrutinized 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington State actually reveals just the opposite: though voter fraud does happen, it happens approximately 0.0009% of the time.


The similarly closely-analyzed 2004 election in Ohio revealed a voter fraud rate of 0.00004%.


National Weather Service data shows that Americans are struck and killed by lightning about as often.




http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/policy_brief_on_the_truth_about_voter_fraud/
 
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