Few if any people actually commit voter fraud, but some people are trying to make it harder to vote anyway.
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One of the biggest myths in American politics is that lots of people are out there running around and voting illegally. Over at Bloomberg Jonathan Bernstein had a great summation of a running fight between election law blogger Rick Hansen and The Republican National Lawyers Association over a Reuters story that debunks the whole idea that people are running around voting under the name of Homer Simpson or something as part of some diabolical plan to steal elections. Bernstein sums Hansen’s big point about voter impersonation fraud as:
There is no such thing.
The handful of documented cases in recent years involve isolated, single-individual violations, not broad attempts to steal an election.
The bulk of U.S. election fraud involves misuse of absentee ballots, not voter impersonation.
And there’s a very good reason: Voter impersonation fraud is an impractical, inefficient, and downright stupid way to try to steal an election.
This might seem like a minor thing to you and me but it’s not. Republican controlled state legislators have been passing a battery of laws to make voting harder in recent years: laws to make your present ID to vote, laws to limit early voting, and laws to make it harder to register voters.
These laws may seem fair at first glance, but they really aren’t. Instead they heavily affect certain groups in our democracy vastly more than others, groups like seniors, the poor, young voters, and racial minorities. And this makes sense on a gut level. A middle class white person like me who hasn’t moved in a few years would have no problem producing a driver’s license at the polls with my current, but a black woman in her seventies who doesn’t drive anymore, is on a fixed income, and recently moved would have trek to the county office to get her license renewed (and pay for transportation and government fees to boo). That might seems easily done to you and me, but to her it could be a major hassle. Indeed she might just decide to stay home instead. And these sorts of realities are a huge part of why a federal judge recently struck down Wisconsin’s new restrictions on voting.
But even on a basic level these laws make no sense. Someone truly determined could easily get around them with a little guile. It may shock the Republican Nation Lawyers Association to learn this, but people under 21 get these things called “fake ids” that are, well fake ids, and use them to break the law and buy alcohol. Someone committed to breaking the law could just as easily get one of those. Furthermore, arguments about “voter fraud” rarely consider the cost. Let’s say I could stop one instance of someone voting as Homer Simpson but would have to keep ten million legitimate voters from the polls. Would that make sense? I’d argue no. And since we know that voter impersonation fraud is very rare, why does it make sense to ban untold thousands from the polls to stop a few hypothetical fake voters? Finally these concerns are just silly, yes silly. On Tuesday I went to vote in a special election for Hennepin County Commissioner District Three (I voted for Marion Greene and you should too in the next round). I saw no men in fake mustaches trying to vote as Guy Incognito or James T. Kirk. Meanwhile in a state with the new anti-fraud laws you can be kept from voting because of the little old laddies that volunteer to run the poll place get confused by your middle initial.
We’ve long acknowledged in our history that our democracy was incomplete when certain classes of people were barred from participation. That’s why we see the expansion of the franchise to people who don’t own land, to blacks, to women, and to people over 18 as great steps forward to our society. We shouldn’t step backwards because we are afraid of a boogeyman than doesn’t exist. Or because some groups tend to vote for the party we don’t like.
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The Democrats in Illinois are expert at exploiting and manipulating elderly voters, by “helping” them obtain absentee ballots and then “helping” them vote those ballots, regardless of how those elderly voters actually want to vote. I suppose from the Democrats’ point of view it’s just an extension of their regular practice of “helping” dead people vote.
Voter fraud doesn’t matter until it’s your vote that’s stolen. The notion that nothing should be done (such as a simple ID requirement) to prevent voter fraud is exclusive to those who benefit from fraud – mostly Democrats. Let me guess this writer’s party affiliation. There’s no changing the mind of a partisan ideologue, so I’m not wasting time here citing all the stolen elections in recent years. Just note, for the record, that Sen. Al Franken won Minnesota by less than the number of felons who voted illegally. Again: voter fraud doesn’t matter until it’s your vote that’s stolen.… Read more »
@Michael Russell, I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before, Glad you’ve joined in. Looks to me that GMP has a new guy on the block that knows what he’s talking about. I hope to see more of you. There are a few of us on here but I have to tell ya, it gets frustrating at times.
I think lots of things should be done! Voting in the US is harder than in almost any other developed democracy in the world and I think it should be made much easier with things like lots of early voting, universal registration, and changing election day into a national holiday or having it on a weekend. The big point here is that requiring ID to vote makes it a lot harder for certain groups to vote, groups that tend to vote Democratic. Hence why the GOP is trying to make it harder for those groups to vote. Simply put voter… Read more »
John, I find it ironic that you think you know the motivations of people who favor voter ID. You’re kinda the poster boy for Jonathan Haidt’s work.
Why do we, as a nation, require ID for work, healthcare, buying basic items, getting govt. benefits but when it comes to voting its suddenly an unconscionable burden? We live in a country where many states have stop and identify statutes. Many of these are blue states. Something about protesting too much would go well here.
CW, I’m hearing those darn crickets again……
There’s an even simpler argument – math. Imagine I’m trying to illegally influence the outcome in a small local election in a small town of, say, 10,000 people. Of these, 2000 or so will actually turn up to vote. To swing the election where my favored candidate has a mere 1% disadvantage, I’d need to recruit 19 other people in a voter fraud scheme. To overcome a 5% disadvantage, I’d need 200 people total. Is it really possible to organize a criminal conspiracy in which 2% of the total populace is involved without someone fucking it up? Of course, national… Read more »
So MCA,because it doesn’t have a big enough impact, then what the heck, why bother? So let’s scale it back down then. When voter fraud in small scale in local elections occur, it affects the big picture. Enough people swing the votes for municipal candidates, the result is that party then controls that municipality. Do that with enough municipalities, you now have an effect on entire county. Accordingly, that county coupled with others then have a substantial enough base to run the state as, in Illinois, that’s gone down the poop shoot. Now let’s look at a city like Chicago.… Read more »
LOL, You’re obviously not from Chicago.
You have to have id to work, receive benefits,, use your super duper awesome obamacare etccc Wonder why the left is only concerned about id and voting? Denying right to work, healthcare etc must be a-ok then?
CW, you have a good point. Technically, you should have ID even when you buy cigarettes and booze. Stores who have been fined for selling to under aged kids are often required to ask for ID from ALL customers.
Actually the way elections were historically stolen in Chicago was not by having a bunch of people vote under fake names, but by casting a bunch of fake ballots either by stuffing the ballot box with pre-made ballots or later in the 20th Century walking into the both with the old time voting machine and cranking the lever a bunch of times. This was called “running up the count.” Another big strategy was to just have individual precincts report fake numbers, you’d hold your precincts back (because all the poll workers are your people) until you knew how many votes… Read more »