The Misleading Myth of Voter Fraud In American Elections

By Lorraine C. Minnite, Rutgers University

Camden, New Jersey--Are fraudulent voters undermining U.S. elections?

The simple answer is no.

Rather, the threat comes from the myth of voter fraud used to justify rules that restrict full and equal voting rights.

A concerted partisan campaign to erect more restrictive voting rules is apace in many states, with Republicans pushing new limits on access and Democrats objecting.

Thousands of changes to state election codes have been proposed since state election codes have contributed to the contested presidential election of 2000.

Far fewer have been signed into law, but those put in place such as rules that people have a certain kind of photo identification card available from specific government offices are making it more difficult for many citizens to cast ballots, including longtime voters as well as new ones.

In a democracy, reducing access to the ballot is difficult to justify.

Political motives and strategies to discourage voting by particular groups such as racial minorities cannot be openly announced.

That’s where the myth of criminal voters comes in as proponents of new rules cite the supposed threat of votes fraudulently cast by foreigners, noncitizens, immigrants, felons, and imposters who supposedly travel around to vote in many precincts.

Mythical threats that stoke social prejudices are used to make new restrictions seem reasonable.

Fraud by Individual Voters is Almost Nonexistent.

The earliest reliable studies of election fraud in the 1920s and 1930s found that individual voters almost never committed fraud on their own.

Conspiracies by politicians or election officials were behind most violations.

Voter registration laws were put in place to reduce such organized fraud.

Today, social scientific research on fraud is difficult because there are no officially compiled national or state statistics.

Researchers must painstakingly piece together evidence from news reports, court proceedings, law enforcement agencies, election officials, and interviews with experts and other sources.

After ten years of such research, I found that intentional fraud by individual voters is exceedingly rare.

Other investigations have reached the same conclusion.

Replicating my methodology, 24 journalism students at twelve universities reviewed some 2,000 public records and identified just six cases of voter impersonation between 2000 and 2012.

Under Republican President George W. Bush, the U.S. Justice Department searched for voter fraud.

But in the first three years of the program, just 26 people were convicted or plead guilty to illegal registration or voting.

Out of 197,056,035 votes cast in the two federal elections held during that period, the rate of voter fraud was a miniscule 0.00000132 percent!

Republicans...

Bless their black little hearts.