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.

The elections of 2014 resembled those of a third-world country. It is difficult to imagine the American people accepted the bogus results as fair or factual after reports of shenanigans, especially in North Carolina.    

Debunking The Conservative Media's 2014 Voter Fraud Horror Stories

October 30, 2014--Right-wing media outlets have used misleading voter fraud stories to stoke fears of rampant voter fraud in the months leading up to the 2014 midterm elections. 

But experts state that voter fraud in the U.S. is virtually non-existent and that voter ID laws would actually disenfranchise voters.

Myth: Voter Impersonation Fraud Is A Major Problem

Fox Correspondent Eric Shawn Disputes Argument That Voter Impersonation Fraud Is A Problem That "Doesn't Exist." 

On the October 29 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News senior correspondent Eric Shawn responded to a statement from Attorney General Eric Holder condemning "unnecessary restrictions that discourage or discriminate or disenfranchise in the name of a problem that doesn't exist," by saying: "of course voter fraud exists in the United States," and that Holder is "not actually factually correct."

But as O'Reilly pointed out, Holder was talking about strict voter ID and voter impersonation, while Shawn nevertheless shifted the conversation to cases of vote buying, which would not be prevented by voter ID laws. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 10/29/14]

Fact: There Is No Evidence Of Massive Voter Impersonation Fraud

Experts Agree That Voter Impersonation is "Virtually Non-Existent."

The New Yorker reported that experts agree that actual incidents of in-person voter fraud--the type of voter fraud that strict voter ID laws can prevent--are "virtually non-existent," and fears of voter fraud have been largely invented as a way to "excite the base." [The New Yorker, 10/29/12]

Brennan Center For Justice: Allegations Of Widespread Voter Fraud "Simply Do Not Pan Out."

The New York University School of Law's Brennan Center has repeatedly explained that in-person voter fraud is not a justification for strict voter ID laws, because voter impersonation is "more rare than getting struck by lightning," and allegations of widespread fraud typically "amount to a great deal of smoke without much fire" and "simply do not pan out." [Brennan Center For Justice, 2007]

Loyola University Professor: Only 31 Out Of 1 Billion Ballots Subject To In-Person Voter Fraud.

Loyola University Law School professor Justin Levitt, who investigated "any specific, credible allegation" of voter impersonation fraud, found a total of "about 31 different incidents" since 2000 of in-person voter fraud out of over 1 billion ballots cast. [The Washington Post, Wonkblog, 8/6/14]

Myth: Study Shows Huge Percentages Of Undocumented Immigrants Illegally Cast Votes

Fox Host Hyped Questionable Study To Stoke Fears That "Illegals Voted Between Two And Six Percent The Last Two Elections." 

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade claimed a recent study found that "illegals voted between two and six percent over the last two elections," and said it "reveals a significant number of noncitizens casting votes alongside real citizens right here in the United States come election day."

Fox guest Rachel Campos-Duffy of the Libre Initiative, a Koch-funded non-profit that targets Latino voters, speculated that non-citizen voting could have "national implications." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 10/27/14]

Fact: Experts Have Cast Doubt On The Study's Methodology And Conclusion

Experts Raised Doubts About The Study's Methodology And Conclusion. 

Brown University political scientist Michael Tesler questioned the study's "methodological challenges," noting the possibility that non-citizens may have misreported their citizenship status.

He pointed out that many self-reported non-citizens in 2012 reported being citizens in 2010, indicating a high rate of response error "which raises important doubts about their conclusions."

Tesler also noted that a "number of academics and commentators have already expressed skepticism about that paper's assumptions and conclusions" which seem to be "tenuous at best." [The Washington Post, Monkey Cage, 19/27/14]

The Study's Authors Outlined The Limitations Of Their Findings.

In a October 24 blog post in The Washington Post, Jessie Richman and David Earnest, two authors of the study, admitted that their "extrapolation to specific state-level or district-level election outcomes is fraught with substantial uncertainty."

The authors noted that the non-citizen sample they examined was "modest" and relied on self-reporting, which can create errors, and attempts to verify the accuracy of the self-reporting was imperfect and supplemented by estimates. [The Washington Post, Monkey Cage, 10/27/14]

Myth: Discovery Of Names Of Ineligible Voters On Voter Rolls Is Proof Of Potential Voter Fraud

Laura Ingraham Asks If The Existence Of Immigrants' Names On NC Voter Rolls Reveals "Nefarious Attempts To Fraud The Vote." 

 After a North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) review found the names of 145 immigrants who received Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status on the state's voter rolls, Fox News and ABC contributor Laura Ingraham claimed the names were proof of "voter manipulation, ballot fraud," and wondered if they showed "nefarious attempts to fraud the vote." Ingraham speculated that the "illegal immigrants who are here under DACA," had been "fast track[ed] ... to voting." [Courtside Entertainment Group, The Laura Ingraham Show, 10/24/14]

Fact: The Discovery Of Potentially Ineligible Voters Is Proof That The Voter Verification System Works

North Carolina Investigated Citizenship Of Flagged Voters And Is Implementing Formal "Challenge Process" To Prevent Ineligible Voters From Casting Ballots.  

The North Carolina Board of Elections conducted an investigation to verify the eligibility of 10,000 registered voters who had been flagged as having "questionable citizenship status" using Department of Homeland Security and N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles data.

The investigation identified 109 DACA recipients who were "on the voter rolls, but have not voted in any prior election," and is implementing a formal challenge process that will allow election officials to insure illegal voting doesn't occur. [North Carolina State Board of Elections]

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I put my heart and my soul into my work,

and have lost my mind in the process.

Vincent Van Gogh

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Meet the Republicans’ Top Guy 
on the Environment, James Inhofe 
(cucko cucko)

By Juliet Lapidos

No sooner did President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China announce goals for combating climate change than Senator Jim Inhofe denounced them.
 
That's what makes him so special...C'mon, lighten up.
 
The Oklahoma Republican called the accord a “non-binding charade” on Wednesday and told The Washington Post that he would do his utmost to let environmental devastation continue apace.

WTF?

In his actual words: “As we enter a new Congress, I will do everything in my power to rein in and shed light on the EPA’s unchecked regulations.”
 
Yeah, EPA...The party's over!

That power isn’t minimal, given that Mr. Inhofe will take control of the Environment and Public Works Committee in January.

Let the games begin!
 
Comforting, isn’t it, that the G.O.P.’s top guy on the environment plans to spend his time bullying the agency dedicated to protecting the environment?
 
We get what we vote for...May gawd have mercy.

Mr. Inhofe’s anti-environmentalist record is as pristine as an old-growth forest, which the senator would surely vote to turn into a logging site.
 
Or a toothpick farm.

He published a book in 2012 called “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future” and said in 2006 that that United Nations invented the idea of global warming in order to “shut down the machine called America.”

Bad United Nations...very, very bad.

Once the U.N. kicked things off, moneyed interests kept up the scam.
 
“Those individuals from the far left,” he told Fox News in 2007, “and I’m talking about the Hollywood elitists and the United Nations and those individuals, want us to believe it’s because we’re contributing CO2 to the atmosphere that’s causing global warming.
 
No, no...we unelitists know it's the cows...you know...

It’s all about money. I mean what would happen to the Weather Channel’s ratings if all of a sudden people weren’t scared anymore?”
 
The Weather Channel? How'd we get to the Weather Channel? 
 
The Weather Channel bit might have been a joke.

Whew.

Mr. Inhofe showed his lighter side in the winter of 2010, after a snowstorm hit D.C., by building an igloo with a sign that read “Al Gore’s New Home.”

Another sign read “Honk if you love global warming.”

Or maybe he wasn’t joking.
 
He doesn’t appear to have been kidding around when he called the E.P.A. a “Gestapo bureaucracy.”
 
Oh, he didn't mean anything by that off-handed remark...Can we go back to the igloo remark?

Confusingly, for someone so committed to the argument that climate change is a hoax, he also thinks that anyone who believes in it is unconscionably arrogant.

Wait just one minute, you crazy, ignorant old phart!

We may be a lot of things, but we are not 'unconscious' or arrogant! Harrump!
 
In 2012, he said on a Voice of Christian Youth America radio program that “God’s still up there.

You have proof of that, Chief?

The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.”

Speaking of outrageous...
 
Carbon emissions aren’t to blame for climate change. God is.

And you know that because...???