State of the Union

The Loathsome Romney Candidacy: How Did We Get Here?

Sore Losers

By Samuel Goldman • July 9, 2012, 3:32 PM

Election fraud is in the news again. More precisely, efforts to suppress voter fraud have come under legal and political scrutiny. In Florida, a plan to remove non-citizens from the voter rolls has been challenged in a series of lawsuits (a comprehensive, although highly critical account is here). In Pennsylvania, Governor Tom Corbett has refused requests to delay enforcement of a voter ID law that could exclude up to 9.2% of registered voters in the state (Gov. Corbett’s office contests the figures). A similar law in Texas goes to federal court today.

These laws are often described as a Republican plot to suppress turnout. In fact, they’re broadly popular, with nearly 75% approval on some polls. The trouble is that ID requirements and purges of the rolls seem to be a solution in search of a problem.

A report released last year by a group that supports the laws found only 400 cases of fraud in the last ten years. And that’s fraud in the broad sense, which includes vote buying and fraudulent registration. There were many fewer cases of voter impersonation or non-citizens actually voting. In none of them, so far as I can tell, was the actual outcome of the election tainted. There may be some voter fraud in this country. But there’s little reason to think that it matters very much.

So what’s going on here? According to many of their critics, the movement against voter fraud is inspired, if not by tactical considerations, then by outright racism. If so, it’s pretty ineffectual. A study by the liberal Brennan Center found that anti-fraud laws have little effect on turnout. And voting rates among minorities actually increased in Georgia in 2008, a year after the state passed a voter ID law. Of course, that was the year Barack Obama ran for president, an historic event that attracted black voters, in particular, to the polls. But the ID requirement apparently didn’t turn many away.

The practical impact of these laws, then, is likely to be more limited than either advocates or critics believe. Very little fraud is going to be prevented because there isn’t much fraud, especially of the kinds the laws target, in the first place. On the other hand, there’s not much risk of mass disenfranchisement. ID requirements apparently have a minimal effect on turnout. And even Florida’s statewide review of the electoral rolls could find only 96 ineligible voters.

Rather than an epidemic of stolen votes or a legal coup d’etat, then, election fraud is a red herring that both parties invoke both to energize their bases and to prepare them for the possibility of failure. The whole controversy could be likely be defused with a simple compromise, such as combining ID laws with funding to provide free proofs of identity to citizens who don’t have them. But it’s in neither party’s interest to make the issue disappear. They prefer the opportunity to play sore losers, should the necessity arise.

Posted in Election, Politics. Tagged election fraud, Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, voter ID.

24 Responses to Sore Losers

TomB says:

July 9, 2012 at 4:16 pm

Ummm, Sam, there’s a freaking big hole in the center of your argument that you may or may not be able to fill.

Obvious that center is whether it matters whether voting fraud exists if it’s so infrequent.

And in support of your assumption that it is so infrequent you cite one thing and one thing only: “a report” from a group in favor of voter I.D. laws that supposedly found only 400 cases of voter fraud in all of the last ten *years.*

Here’s your problems, Sam:

In citing that “report” you link not to any report at all, but instead merely to the webpages of the group that you believe apparently did it: The Republican National Lawyers Ass’n.

And on their pages I find no link to any such study.

And instead on their pages I see things like the statement that “Vote Fraud Is All Over The Map,” and, just to name one thing, the President of that Ass’n asserting in a U.S. News article that “Twelve thousand noncitizens registered to vote in Colorado; apparently 5,000 of those voted in 2010.”

In short, statement after statement precisely contrary to your assertion that vote fraud is not a problem worth worrying about.

Plus then there’s the suspicion that whatever “report” you are citing looked merely at *convictions” for vote fraud in the last ten years. And to look at that number and infer *any* relationship at all to it and the amount of electoral fraud out there is just laughable.

Obviously, just like other crimes and probably even moreso, there’s vastly more crimes out there than convictions for same.

Plus voting fraud it particularly difficult to detect. And when it is it’s often not pursued or plea-bargained down given the view of it as usually not mattering and not being of a terribly important nature compared to other crimes that must be investigated and prosecuted. Plus lots of voting crimes might not even be *called* voting “fraud,” which seems to be the only the convictions your “report” is concerned with.

Plus there’s the fact that for voting fraud to be important doesn’t mean it has to be ubiquitous or evenly practiced. Done in a key precinct or race here or there, and then considering how close many of our recent elections have been….

The parties don’t distribute campaign funds equally, because they know some races are more important than others. That same truth exists vis a vis voting fraud.

Browse through the links on that Republican Lawyers website, Sam, and see if maybe your understanding of the issue isn’t a bit too complacent.
TomB says:

July 9, 2012 at 4:23 pm

P.S.

And in looking further at that Republican Lawyers Ass’n site I see *perhaps* what “report” you are talking about, Sam. Except, if it is, the Ass’n *itself* says it’s merely a “*limited* survey to indicate whether vote fraud charges *have* been filed in states across the country since 2000 [and that all they looked for was] at least one example in each state….”

That’s no “report,” Sam, if that’s what you meant.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

July 9, 2012 at 4:39 pm

I followed the link also, and it led to a rather hysterical report boiling down in substance to just what Sam said: about 400 cases of voter fraud, nationwide.

So we are left with TomB, at great length, telling us that a well researched and referenced commentary can’t be right, because the Republican Lawyers Association says otherwise. Meh.
Thomas O. Meehan says:

July 9, 2012 at 4:55 pm

TomB pretty much beat me to a lot of what matters. All I can add as a onetime practicing politician and participant in the Ballott Security Task Force in NJ is that voter fraud is much more prevalent in minority communities. Any attempt to secure the integrity of the vote will indeed have a disparate impact on those communities. Is this a reason to let the fraud go through, hardly, if we want the vote to mean anything.

To amplify TomB’s point, I’m familiar with many first person accounts of voter fraud prevented, but very few where people who were turned away were followed up by law enforcement for prosecution.

Election fraud goes on all the time. Here are a few personally attest-able examples.

Democratic party officials gain access to ostensibly secure nursing homes where they collect absentee ballots from senile residents who miraculously evolve from life long Republicans into Democratic voters.

Seminarians (!) voting in local elections after they have graduated and moved.

Large number of urban voters who claim addresses that are in fact warehouses, empty lots, etc. and are allowed to vote none the less.
Matt says:

July 9, 2012 at 6:02 pm

TAC here takes the respectable position on voter fraud, which is that it doesn’t matter and so the restrictions are just meanness for the sake thereof. But the practical question of whether voter fraud is pervasive or not is irrelevant. Fact is, if you are going to have requirements for eligibility to vote, then you ought to have a system of enforcing them. If you aren’t going to, then don’t have the requirements. The structure of the requirements is a matter for policy-makers, but it has become clear that the ‘liberal’ side of the issue simply doesn’t want voter restrictions to exist at all.
cka2nd says:

July 9, 2012 at 10:28 pm

Matt says: “…it has become clear that the ‘liberal’ side of the issue simply doesn’t want voter restrictions to exist at all.”

Really? Is there some broadly representative liberal organization that is calling for non-citizens to be allowed to vote in statewide or federal elections, or hell, at any level above School Board? I’ve been voting in New York State for over 30 years and the poll workers check my signature against my registration card (or it’s photocopy) every time. That seems restrictive enough to me absent evidence of even a hint, a whiff, of widespread voter impersonation fraud.
cka2nd says:

July 9, 2012 at 10:39 pm

Thomas O. Meehan says: “All I can add as a onetime practicing politician and participant in the Ballott [sic] Security Task Force in NJ…Election fraud goes on all the time.”

Yep, and both Dems and Repubs engage in it and even get prosecuted for it, such as for falsifying absentee ballots and registration forms.

Of course, GOP’ers such as you specialize in ballot suppression (“Security,” hah!) activities, especially in minority communities, from William Rehnquist in 1964 to NYC cops carrying water for Rudy Giuliani in 1993.

The Dems may be somewhat worse than the GOP when it comes to ballot access for Third Parties and independent candidates, but there are few in either party truly willing to give voters more of a choice.
Thomas O. Meehan says:

July 10, 2012 at 1:05 am

cka2nd wrote; “Of course, GOP’ers such as you specialize in ballot suppression (“Security,” hah!) activities, especially in minority communities, from William Rehnquist in 1964 to NYC cops carrying water for Rudy Giuliani in 1993.” That’s true, we suppress voting fraud where we find it. And we don’t need your approval to do it.
Mike Ehling says:

July 10, 2012 at 1:43 am

Thomas O. Meehan says: “All I can add as a onetime practicing politician….”

I have some practical experience too, from quite a number of years back, and in my experience it’s quite unusual to find that a bogus individual appears at a polling place to cast a ballot.

In my own opinion, fraud is much more likely to occur in the absentee ballot system, where (1) bogus ballots can be submitted and no one appears in person or, what may be more common, (2) illegal “assistance” is provided to absentee voters in private and completely outside of view by any election officials. This latter case is found in Thomas Meehan’s own example of “senile” nursing home residents “who miraculously evolve from life long Republicans into Democratic voters” — except, note, that in districts where Republicans control the political machinery, it’s far more likely that “life long Democracts” will “miraculously evolve” into “Republican votes.”

It’s not just “senile” nursing home residents, though, but fraud that can occur across the board through illegal assistance in absentee voting and, even on election day, illegal assistance in the polling places themselves if the minority party (be it Democrat or Republican) is so poorly organized that it lacks poll watchers.

Additionally, where fraud is particularly prevalent isn’t even in the voting system itself but in the nominating petitions, where a petition circulator may forge numerous signatures from names s/he has simply taken from a “street list” of registered voters. An example is a fairly recent case in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, involving the Republican congressional campaign of former U.S. Attorney Pat Meehan, with the defendant in that case now just last month having been hired by a county-funded NGO.

This kind of fraud can occur anywhere, and it can occur with either party. A notable example occurred in the mid-90s in Philadelphia, where a Democratic state senate campaign was found to have engaged in massive absentee ballot fraud.

The point that I’m making is that, as a practical matter, fraud very rarely occurs by bogus voters appearing to vote at polling places on election day — and this is the only kind of fraud that “voter ID” in any way addresses. When fraud occurs, it’s going to occur out-of-sight, in circulation of nominating petitions, in the use of absentee voting, and (though probably more rarely, I suspect) in illegal assistance in the polls themselves.

Voter ID, though, will suppress some votes, and more likely it’s going to occur in Democratic districts, where there will probably be more voters without the necessary ID. That’s certainly the expectation of Pennsylvania State House Republican leader Mike Turzai. Furthermore, considering that more confusion with IDs is likely for the same reason to occur in Democratic districts, the confusion and additional workload for precinct election boards is going to cause greater delay in voting in a high-turnout presidential election, with the possibility of voter discouragement at long lines.

I’m not trying to promote either a Democratic or a Republican outcome, either Barack da Bomber or Etch-a-Sketch Mitt. I’ll most likely vote Gary Johnson for president (assuming the Libertarian Party is able to satisfy Pennsylvania’s very difficult ballot access requirements) or I just won’t vote for president at all, and I won’t vote for any candidate for national office (president, senator, or representative), who is not anti-war, anti-empire, and does not oppose atrocities like the Patriot (last refuse of scoundrels) Act.

Objectively, though, voter ID laws are a solution in search of a problem, they have no effect whatsoever on the more prevalent forms of election fraud, and they do have a voter-suppression effect that disproportionately impacts Democratic districts, especially in a high-turnout presidential year.
TomB says:

July 10, 2012 at 4:08 am

Mike Ehling wrote:

“The point that I’m making is that, as a practical matter, fraud very rarely occurs by bogus voters appearing to vote at polling places on election day — and this is the only kind of fraud that “voter ID” in any way addresses.”

I guess I’m sort of confused on this issue. Mike’s conclusion about what “Voter ID” bills would do is certainly logical and he sounds thoughtful and reasonable otherwise, but I do note the lack of any support he offers for his (and others’) necessarily primary proposition that “fraud very rarely occurs by bogus voters appearing to vote at polling places.”

I mean … it certainly sounds reasonable at first blush given that it takes a certain amount of bravery to go and try to illegally vote for its very little reward. (One’s solitary vote that is.)

But then there’s the question about people’s possible basic innocent confusion about their eligibility to vote, such as, say, people who have been granted amnesty to live in this country, but have not been made citizens. (And if a person innocently votes illegally they aren’t even going to be charged with intentional fraud for doing so if caught.)

And then I note the huge numbers of people involved in such complicating immigration/citizenship things over the last few decades that might cause such confusion, and again I read that statement from that Chairwoman of the Republican Lawyer’s group that said that “Twelve thousand noncitizens registered to vote in Colorado; apparently 5,000 of those voted in 2010,” and while she may be a Republican she made the claim in the U.S. News and World Report and she can hardly be so stupid or evil as to have made it without some support.

So even if she’s off by a factor of 50%, well then 2,500 voted in Colorado alone bogusly in 2010 and that may well not have been chopped liver in lots of its races.

Plus for an example I see a link to a Richmond Times-Dispatch article back in April reporting 38 or so convictions for voting fraud in the 2008 Virginia general elections, noting that investigations are still on-going to the “more that 400″ cases the State Elections Board referred for prosecution.

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2012/apr/22/tdmain01-va-investigates-voter-fraud-ar-1859666/

I also recall the matter of the Democratic politico running for some office in California some recent years ago (for Federal office I think) who was caught just about as openly as possible telling illegals here that they had the right to vote and should do so.

(And while I realize this doesn’t evidence that such vote fraud occurs or is significant, it sure shows that there’s some people who damn well want it to occur and damn well believe it can be significant.)

The sole whit of support offered here then for the proposition that voting fraud/wrongful voting isn’t a significant problem remains Sam Goldman’s terrible apparent misreading of that Republican Lawyer’s Ass’n self-described “limited survey” as a “report,” interpreting it to mean the Ass’n looked for and only found some 400 cases of fraud in the last 10 years. As I noted before, the Ass’n itself said it merely was looking to see if it could find “at least one [such] example in every state,” which they did.

And then again there’s that issue about actual conscious voting fraud perhaps not being any problem (thus resulting in few prosecutions perhaps), but *innocent* illegal voting still being a significant issue.
Sheldon says:

July 10, 2012 at 8:23 am

I disagree strongly with this post, and with those who support it. Close to 10% of Pennsylvania’s electorate don’t have driver’s licenses, and these voters are overwhelmingly concentrated in cities – i.e., far more likely to be Democrats. The potential disenfranchisement of over 700,000 legal voters is deliberately designed to hand the state to Romney – as Mike Turzai, the Republican leader of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, openly admitted a few weeks ago. Precisely the same motive governs similar efforts in other states run by Republican governors. Mr. Goldman is living in some kind of fantasy land if he thinks the effort to suppress Democratic turnout isn’t cynical and real.
cka2nd says:

July 10, 2012 at 11:44 am

TomB and Co.,

I’m going to be a bit lazy here and not try to summarize their findings, but you may want to check out the Breenan Center’s website on this issue, http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/
Mike Ehling says:

July 10, 2012 at 1:42 pm

Thanks, TomB, for your reasonable response to a sometimes inflammatory issue.

Let’s analyze the issue that you raise, or at least what seems to be your primary issue, namely, that inadvertently illegal voting is occurring by those honestly confused about their eligibility to vote.

Here’s a precise quote from your post: “Twelve thousand noncitizens registered to vote in Colorado; apparently 5,000 of those voted in 2010,” and I’ll use it as an illustrative example.

Assume that those facts as alleged by the Chairwoman of the Republican Lawyer’s group are true. So what? That problem is in no way solved by voter ID at the polls. It’s a problem that already occurred in the voter registration process! I can’t imagine that we’re going to have citizenship checks being conducted (Joe Arpaio style?) at the polling places by local election officials who serve in those positions twice a year.

All that voter ID at the polls does is prevent, say, Mike Ehling from appearing at TomB’s polling place and pretending to be TomB. And it presumes that TomB is already registered to vote and that Mike Ehling knows TomB is already registered to vote and that there is no election official at the local poll (remember, TomB, these are your own neighbors) who knows that this sixty-year-old schlep who’s really Mike Ehling is just posing as the handsome, debonair TomB. ;-> And it also assumes that handsome, debonair TomB hasn’t already voted or that he won’t show up a few hours later to ask who the heck this schlep was who forged TomB’s signature (because you’ve got to sign a slip in a voting book before you can go into the voting machine).

Now, I will say this, some states may have very liberal voting procedures that allow an individual to register and vote on election day right at the polls. In such a case, that is a potential opening for fraud. In Pennsylvania, though, that’s not the case, and Pennsylvania voters must register to vote no later than thirty days before the election, registering with the county election bureau (run by full-time employees, not twice-a-year precinct election officials).

I’ve been addressing this issue strictly from the perspective of Pennsylvania, because that’s what I really know and I want to give factual detail to support my arguments, not speak in generalities based on what some partisan (Republican or Democrat) politician has said somewhere or other in the country, be it Colorado or elsewhere. I’d certainly welcome response, though, from readers in states which do have very liberal voting procedures that allow an individual to register and vote on election day right at the polls, because this does raise a potentially different issue.

And the intent of voter ID in Pennsylvania (again, being specific to my own state, so that I can speak in factual detail) is obvious from Mike Turzai’s own statement at a partisan Republican gathering, that the voter ID law was going to win Pennsylvania for Romney.

I don’t question that voting fraud occurs, although it’s of real significance in more local elections where small vote-margins (especially manipulated by absentee voting fraud) can effect the outcome, such as in the Stinson-Marks Pennsylvania state senate election I referred to in my prior post, and moreover, it’s specifically not a problem that’s solved by making voters pull out photo ID at the polling place.
Thomas O. Meehan says:

July 10, 2012 at 2:17 pm

Sheldon wrote: “Close to 10% of Pennsylvania’s electorate don’t have driver’s licenses, and these voters are overwhelmingly concentrated in cities – i.e., far more likely to be Democrats.”

Of course this overlooks the fact that the more “Urban” and “Disadvantaged” one is, the more likely one is to possess a photo ID. Those without ID face the arduous odyssey to city hall, with all the grueling hazards that that implies. Oh the pity of it all!
daddysteve says:

July 10, 2012 at 2:37 pm

Electronic voting machines anyone? ….anyone?
TomB says:

July 10, 2012 at 5:22 pm

Mike Ehling wrote:

“Assume that those facts as alleged by the Chairwoman of the Republican Lawyer’s group are true. So what? That problem is in no way solved by voter ID at the polls. It’s a problem that already occurred in the voter registration process!”

Of course. How stupid of me. I guess I was just thinking that to even start to catch any fraud or innocent wrongful voting you’d at least have to start with a Voter ID means (backed by a database of some sort), but you’re exactly right, a simple Voter ID card does nothing about the latter wrongful voters.

My only defense is that the innocent wrongful voter wasn’t my only concern, but as regards same and just a simple ID card or etc. I hereby cry Uncle. (And thank you for not rubbing my stupidity in; it hurts enough already.)
Sheldon says:

July 10, 2012 at 6:02 pm

Meehan, city dwellers are more likely to have driver’s licenses? And over 700 people in just Pennsylvania having to scramble for ID’s is no hardship?

Those of you who haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid the way Meehan has may want to check out this analysis of what is prompting this Republican assault on voting rights:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/07/suppression-vs-turnout-the-2012-war.html
Sheldon says:

July 10, 2012 at 6:03 pm

I meant 700,000 of course, not 700.
Thomas O. Meehan says:

July 10, 2012 at 7:07 pm

TomB, showing a photo ID goes someway to preventing Illegal alien voting and will deter some other types as well. Just because there are other ways to perpetrate election fraud doesn’t mean that you fail to enact and enforce laws to block other avenues.

There is another good reason to insist on photo ID. The kind of lowlives that are used to present themselves to cast votes are very leery of showing ID of any kind. Many have outstanding warrants.
TomB says:

July 11, 2012 at 12:22 am

@ Thom Meehan:

Hi Thom. Yeah I still think requiring some Voter ID makes sense but I didn’t want to pretend Mike hadn’t speared me fairly and squarely in the heart with his observation concerning unconsciously illegal voters.

Indeed though, in an age when you’ve practically got to show an ID to take a whiz, to not require one when voting can only be taken as a sort of symbolic denigration of good citizenship itself, and that’s what really grates.

We always hear from the “No-ID” people how much they care that everyone gets to vote, but if so then getting a voting ID shouldn’t be that much of a burden.

On the other hand when someone votes illegally any one of us might say that in a one-to-one fashion our vote has been cancelled and *we* have been disenfranchised.

As Sam Goldman said here originally it’s one of those simple, stupid little things that tells me we’re going backward. Of course a reasonable, cheap compromise is easily available Voter ID means and then a linked database.

And yet … our parties find ways to fight their way from that.

Sort of funny: The English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once said that civilization advances by increasing the number of complex tasks it can perform without thinking about them.

Well folks, we’ve now arrived at the point where we can’t even increase the number of *simple* tasks we can perform even *despite* thinking about them.
KenE says:

July 11, 2012 at 4:14 pm

One major question that neither the article nor any of the comments answers: assuming that there are very few prosecutions for voter fraud (an assumption that is true), does it make sense to broadly disenfranchise thousands of voters to stop the one case of voter fraud? Where is the logic in that?

Second, is it a coincidence that Republican governors are pushing these laws?
Thomas O. Meehan says:

July 11, 2012 at 5:44 pm

KenE wrote,”,,,,does it make sense to broadly disenfranchise thousands of voters to stop the one case of voter fraud? Where is the logic in that?”

It’s the same logic that informs all law. Laws are passed to correct the illegal and abnormal, not the legal and normal. Given that election fraud exists and that, as we see overseas, it has the potential to destroy the legitimacy of the state, simple steps to make it harder should be non-controversial. Instead, Voter ID as a simple measure of administrative hygiene becomes an alarm bell to the left.

Measures like voter ID laws do not disenfranchise anyone who can legitimately vote. They just have to want to as much as the rest of us. You can’t show up in your local polling place in the nude. If the lumpenproles you’re so worried about can get dressed to vote, they can get ID’s to bring with them.

Isn’t it odd that those posing as defenders of those “disenfranchised” voters can only do so by picturing them as slothful imbeciles? Getting picture ID is laughably easy, especially so with assistance of the host of Government funded community action programs designed to assist the poor.

No, the left opposes voter ID and other measures to protect the integrity of the franchise precisely because they know of, an approve of voter fraud.
Eli Rabett says:

July 14, 2012 at 11:33 pm

Fine, go with a national ID card, at no cost to any citizen, issued by the government and a strong and well funded campaign to make sure that every citizen has one.

The fact that all of these voter ID laws put the costs of getting the card on the citizen make them little more than poll taxes and their real objective plain.
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