Voter Fraud Less Likely Than Getting Hit By Lightning
Many of the voter suppression statutes passed in GOP controlled states in the past few years have been justified as preventing voter fraud. How much voter fraud is there? Justin Levitt has looked into it (h/t Kevin Drum)
To be clear, I’m not just talking about prosecutions. I track any specific, credible allegation that someone may have pretended to be someone else at the polls, in any way that an ID law could fix.
So far, I’ve found about 31 different incidents (some of which involve multiple ballots) since 2000, anywhere in the country. If you want to check my work, you can read a comprehensive list of the incidents below.
To put this in perspective, the 31 incidents below come in the context of general, primary, special, and municipal elections from 2000 through 2014. In general and primary elections alone, more than 1 billion ballots were cast in that period.
31 out of a billion. Yeah, these laws were intended to curb voter fraud.
Click here for reuse options!Copyright 2014 Liberaland
By: Stuart Shapiro
Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.
8 responses to Voter Fraud Less Likely Than Getting Hit By Lightning
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labman57 August 7th, 2014 at 15:24
Since Republicans cannot count on the votes from key demographic sectors of the electorate, they have opted for a different approach — reduce the number of these citizens who are able to vote.
And so they have strategized (and to some extent, implemented) a multi-pronged effort to curtail the ability of minority, student, and elderly voters to participate in the election process:
1) Make it more difficult to “prove” your citizenship via voter ID legislation, fully aware that the elderly, out-of-state college students, and socio-economically disenfranchised citizens will have a much more difficult time providing the narrowly-defined necessary documentation to verify their right to vote.
– unlike voting, buying beer or boarding a commercial airliner are not fundamental American rights.
2) Cull the registration database for names deemed to “probably” be fictitious or otherwise fraudulent. (Anyone whose surname ends in “-ez” is most certainly an invalid registrant …)
3) Eliminate or drastically reduce early voting and/or reduce the number of election precincts., since student, poor, and elderly voters tend to have a more difficult time getting to the polls on the first Tuesday of November, and urban precincts are more likely to have extremely long lines that require you to stand for hours in line.
4) Create modern equivalents of the poll tax (part of the old Jim Crow laws) wherein selected demographic groups must incur out-of-pocket expenses to retain the right to vote.
5) Use gerrymandering policies to redistrict red states so that predominantly white rural regions that represent a minority of the populace attain the majority of the voting power.
Bottom line: The two most powerful players in the GOP’s strategic planning for state and national elections continue to be … Gerry Mander and Jim Crow II.
Dwendt44 August 8th, 2014 at 00:39
#2. Purge the voter rolls of anyone with a minority sounding name or those with a similar name to a known criminal. You never know when a crooks family members might be criminals too, eh?
labman57 August 7th, 2014 at 15:24
Since Republicans cannot count on the votes from key demographic sectors of the electorate, they have opted for a different approach — reduce the number of these citizens who are able to vote.
And so they have strategized (and to some extent, implemented) a multi-pronged effort to curtail the ability of minority, student, and elderly voters to participate in the election process:
1) Make it more difficult to “prove” your citizenship via voter ID legislation, fully aware that the elderly, out-of-state college students, and socio-economically disenfranchised citizens will have a much more difficult time providing the narrowly-defined necessary documentation to verify their right to vote.
– unlike voting, buying beer or boarding a commercial airliner are not fundamental American rights.
2) Cull the registration database for names deemed to “probably” be fictitious or otherwise fraudulent. (Anyone whose surname ends in “-ez” is most certainly an invalid registrant …)
3) Eliminate or drastically reduce early voting and/or reduce the number of election precincts., since student, poor, and elderly voters tend to have a more difficult time getting to the polls on the first Tuesday of November, and urban precincts are more likely to have extremely long lines that require you to stand for hours in line.
4) Create modern equivalents of the poll tax (part of the old Jim Crow laws) wherein selected demographic groups must incur out-of-pocket expenses to retain the right to vote.
5) Use gerrymandering policies to redistrict red states so that predominantly white rural regions that represent a minority of the populace attain the majority of the voting power.
Bottom line: The two most powerful players in the GOP’s strategic planning for state and national elections continue to be … Gerry Mander and Jim Crow II.
Dwendt44 August 8th, 2014 at 00:39
#2. Purge the voter rolls of anyone with a minority sounding name or those with a similar name to a known criminal. You never know when a crooks family members might be criminals too, eh?
Dwendt44 August 8th, 2014 at 00:41
If you look closely at the handful of actual voter fraud cases, you’ll find that a photo I.D. would NOT have stopped the fraud in most cases.
Dwendt44 August 8th, 2014 at 00:41
If you look closely at the handful of actual voter fraud cases, you’ll find that a photo I.D. would NOT have stopped the fraud in most cases.
KABoink_after_wingnut_hacker August 9th, 2014 at 07:38
The John Birch Society lives on. The voter fraud argument is just an excuse to discriminate. Furthermore their argument of photo ID doesn’t hold up against: why cut early voting and why close polling stations in certain areas? These treasonous bastards are just stacking the deck whilst destroying our democracy.
KABoink_after_wingnut_hacker August 9th, 2014 at 07:38
The John Birch Society lives on. The voter fraud argument is just an excuse to discriminate. Furthermore their argument of photo ID doesn’t hold up against: why cut early voting and why close polling stations in certain areas? These treasonous bastards are just stacking the deck whilst destroying our democracy.