Posted on 08/22/2012 10:06:36 PM PDT by Loud Mime
Of all the developments in The Voting Wars since 2000, the lead story has to be the successful Republican effort to create an illusion of a voter fraud epidemic used to justify a host of laws, especially tough new state voter identification requirements, with the aim to suppress Democratic turnout and to excite the Republican base about “stolen” elections. Democrats sometimes have exaggerated the likely effects of such laws on turnout—we won’t see millions of voters disenfranchised by state voter id laws, for example. But in a very close presidential election, as we are likely to see in November, new voter id rules, voter purges in places like Colorado and Florida, cutbacks in early voting in Ohio, and other technical changes have the potential to suppress Democratic turnout enough to swing the election from Obama to Romney.
How did we get here? Our story begins with what Josh has aptly referred to as “bamboozlement” by a group of political operatives, “The Fraudulent Fraud Squad.”
Chapter 2 of The Voting Wars tells the whole story, but here’s a brief sketch. The disputed 2000 election made clear to political operatives that the rules of the game could matter at the margin, and in our hyper-partisan and evenly divided country more elections would be decided at the margin. When Congress considered fixes to our election system, after 2000, a Republican insider named Thor Hearne—likely at the urging of Karl Rove—created a phony think tank, the “American Center for Voting Rights” to testify before a congressional committee and push the line that “voter fraud” was rampant. (The term “voter fraud” is actually relatively new, and more election crimes appear to be committed by election officials and party operatives than voters.)
ACVR relied upon discredited allegations of election fraud, and upon proven evidence of voter registration fraud. Some of the allegations had racial undertones, such as a focus on a false registration of “Mr. Jive F. Turkey, Sr.” and work by the NAACP.
Registration fraud was a real problem thanks to ACORN’s broken business model, which used very poor people to register voters and stood ready to fire them if they did not produce enough voter registrations. While that led ACORN workers to turn in lots of “Mickey Mouse” registration cards, I’ve yet to see proof that a single fraudulent ACORN-related registration card led to an actual fraudulently cast ballot.
ACVR eventually disappeared in the dark of night, with the website coming down without warning and Thor Hearne scrubbing his resume of references to his organization. But by then many on the right were pushing the voter fraud line hard. For example Dick Armey claimed that 3% of votes cast were fraudulent Democratic votes and that the problem was especially bad in “urban areas” in the “inner cities.” Michele Malkin suggested that voter fraud would infect the 2010 elections, but she abandoned the claim when Republicans gave Democrats a “thumping” in that election.
Importantly, Republicans tied their claims of voter fraud to ostensible fraud prevention measures which would be most likely to depress Democratic turnout, but they ignored measures which would actually combat real problems of fraud. So Republicans pushed hard for voter identification laws, which would prevent one person from impersonating another at the polls.
But the tell that Republicans were not serious about fraud prevention was their failure to call for laws limiting absentee balloting to those with a valid excuse for not voting at the polling place. A recent News21 survey of prosecutions in all 50 states shows that vote buying through absentee ballots is a real—though relatively small— problem. That survey found that impersonation fraud is almost non-existent—10 allegations across the country in the last decade. It’s no wonder, as impersonation fraud is an exceedingly dumb way to seal an election.
Yet the prevalence of voter impersonation fraud is central to Republican justifications for voter i.d. laws, and so in researching my book I went looking for any case in the last generation in which voter impersonation fraud would have happened on a large enough scale that could have conceivably affected the outcome of the election. I could find nothing. For five years the Bush Justice Department pushed hard for election prosecutions across the U.S., and came up with no impersonation fraud conspiracies. Same with Texas. And at the recent Pennsylvania trial over its new voter id law, the state conceded it knew of no cases of impersonation voter fraud.
Hans von Spakovsky, one of the charter members of the Fraudulent Fraud Squad, claimed that there was such “recent” evidence of a problem with impersonation fraud, and he cited to a grand jury report issued in 1984 by the Brooklyn (N.Y.) district attorney’s office. (Put aside the fact that 1984 is not so recent.)
I asked von Spakovsky for a copy of the report. I heard nothing from him, even though he had contacted me in the past pitching items to include on my Election Law Blog. I wrote to the president of the Heritage Foundation, where von Spakovsky works, asking for the report, and noting that good scholarship requires that scholars make their data available for verification. Silence. TPM ran a story on it. Silence.
A law librarian at UC Irvine finally was able to track down a copy of the report from the district attorney’s office. And guess what? The grand jury found lots of shenanigans by election officials and party officials (including party officials hiding in the ceiling of the men’s room of the Brooklyn Board of Elections to change voter registration after dark). But virtually no cases of voter impersonation fraud and nothing done without the collusion of election officials.
But by then, von Spakovsky had moved on. In a syndicated column, he wrote of an election allegedly stolen by at least 50 illegal votes cast by Somalis voting in Kansas. When I pointed out on my blog that the court examining these claims found no proof of illegal voting and that the election took place in Missouri, not Kansas, he corrected the column’s reference to Kansas, but did nothing to remove his discredited claim of fraud in the election.
More recently, von Spakovsky and his co-author John Fund wrote a book in which they rely on wholly discredited allegations that fraudulent voting was responsible for Al Franken’s win in Minnesota over Norm Coleman in the recount and litigation over the disputed Minnesota U.S. Senate race.
This is the modus operandi of the Fraudulent Fraud Squad. Use false and exaggerated claims. Don’t correct the record when proven wrong. Use a bait-and-switch on fraud allegations to justify laws which don’t prevent fraud. Make people believe voter fraud is an epidemic when it’s not. And call those who point out the truth “vote fraud deniers.”
In the meantime, Republican legislatures and election officials change election rules to make it harder to register and vote in the name of fraud prevention and voter confidence, confidence which political operatives have manipulated with unfounded and exaggerated allegations of voter fraud.
Need an ID to buy beer, cigarettes, get on a plane.
Minimum of what a valid voter should be able to produce.
But the tell that Republicans were not serious about fraud prevention was their failure to call for laws limiting absentee balloting to those with a valid excuse for not voting at the polling place. A recent News21 survey of prosecutions in all 50 states shows that vote buying through absentee ballots is a real—though relatively small— problem. That survey found that impersonation fraud is almost non-existent—10 allegations across the country in the last decade. It’s no wonder, as impersonation fraud is an exceedingly dumb way to seal an election.
No supporting data.
What a pile of obama...
The Minnesota election was decided by felons allowed to vote.
One Senate seat enough proof to show the laws need to prevent stolen elections?
Felons decide election:
Argument over. Try a new topic.
They love to set up straw men in these false narratives of theirs and then knock them down. Republican don’t usually claim there is any epidemic of vote fraud, because they don’t need to. Most people understand that common sense measures to prevent fraud should be taken, whether or not there is any epidemic or pressing need for them. It’s the Dems who throw out “there’s no vote fraud” as some excuse for why we shouldn’t take the simplest measures to prevent vote fraud.
If anything, Republicans only go and cite examples of actual vote fraud in order to give the lie to the Democrat excuses for inaction.
Use false and exaggerated claims. Don’t correct the record when proven wrong. Use a bait-and-switch on fraud allegations to justify laws which don’t prevent fraud. Make people believe voter fraud is an epidemic when it’s not. And call those who point out the truth “vote fraud deniers.”
Just the democrat way, why get your pants in a wad?
It’s no wonder, as impersonation fraud is an exceedingly dumb way to seal an election.
most thieves crooks and many liberals are not known for being very smart...
personally i like to know just how strict is voting via mail. I think most of the fraud is committed via mail not at the booth
OF COURSE there are very few examples of voter fraud.
BECAUSE NOBODY CHECKS FOR IT. . .
Duh. . .you can’t find what you’re not looking for. . .
DEM don’t like regulations on elections, but regulating what we eat, buy etc is fine
DEM don’t like regulations on elections, but regulating what we eat, buy etc is fine
Not only is there no supporting data, but also the argument itself is weak. Not calling for a law does nothing to imply that we wouldn’t support it if proposed. I haven’t heard any Democrats call for such legislation either, for that matter.
I think most Republicans would be happy to support legislation to prevent absentee ballot fraud. However, I’d want to see any such legislation include stronger provisions to make sure that absentee ballots were both distributed in the proper, timely manner, and that they were actually counted before the votes were certified.
They say this but there have been many high profile voter fraud cases the last couple of decades.
A Conservative needs to research these and put them all in one place and get them out there.
The first thing visible in Prof. Rick Hasen's office on the third floor of the UCI School of Law is a voting booth just inside the door - one from Florida actually used during the hotly contested presidential election of 2000.
That's because election law, Hasen’s primary field of expertise, took off with that election, he explains, after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to order a recount in Florida, and George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by a narrow margin. "In 2000, the area exploded," Hasen says. "Most major law schools now have someone in the field and there are competing textbooks."
If I remember correctly, the selective recount was refused by the USSC UNANIMOUSLY! An entire recount was possible.
Anybody keen on this?
Another thing I noticed:
“That survey found that impersonation fraud is almost non-existent—10 allegations across the country in the last decade.”
The way this is stated, it cannot possibly be the case that there were only 10 cases reported where in person vote fraud occured. The wording “impersonation fraud” leads me to think they are talking only about cases where a real, living, legitimate registered voter complained that someone else cast their vote. If that is true, it conveniently excludes registered voters voting in their own name multiple times, voting in the name of nonexistent people, voting using the names of dead people, or old invalid registrations of people who no longer live in the district to discover the fraud and report it, etc.
So, it seems to be the classic bait and switch. Contrast in person vote fraud with absentee ballot fraud, and then show some statistics for absentee ballot fraud versus just a small subset of in person vote fraud.
The group is the King Street Patriots!
I ran into them at a Tea Party event.
http://www.kingstreetpatriots.org/
Yes, I do believe you are correct. The way I remember it, there was a full recount that kicked in automatically, by state law. When that recount started going in Bush’s favor, and the margin of victory was widening, the Dems sued in Florida court to stop the full recount. Then they fought in court, all the way up to the USSC to attempt to get them to order only a selective recount, and the Supremes refused to interfere in the process by overturning the state courts. Then, finally the full recount resumed and W was declared the winner.
At least, that is my recollection.
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