Has voter fraud been a demonstrated problem in recent U.S. history?
A liberal acquaintance of mine who was arguing against the requirement of identification at the polling place told me that "voter fraud" was a Republican red herring, and that there is no substantial proof that it's much of a problem in the U.S.
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Answer by
Because fraud is intrinsically hidden, understanding its extent is difficult. But there are obvious opportunities to do this easily, and small-but-significant known examples. From John Fund's "Voter-Fraud Showdown" piece in the WSJ (Jan. 9, 2008):
- 2004 Washington gubernatorial race: Election superintendent testified that "ineligible felons had voted and votes had been cast in the name of the dead." The election was decided by 129 votes.
- 2004 Presidential election in Wisconsin: "More than 200 felons voted illegally and more than 100 people voted twice."
- "A New York Daily News investigation in 2006 found that between 400 and 1,000 voters registered in Florida and New York City had voted twice in at least one recent election."
captainpower: He's written several books on voter fraud as well.Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracyis just one of them.
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- · August 17, 2012 at 10:29pm
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Answer by Roberto
PJMedia conveniently has The Complete Guide to ACORN Voter Fraud (Oct.14,2008):
- In the state of Missouri in 1986, 12 ACORN members were convicted of voter fraud.
- In December 2004, in St. Louis, six volunteers pleaded guilty of dozens of election law violations for filling out registration cards with names of dead people and other bogus information.
- In October 2006, St. Louis election officials discovered at least 1,492 “potentially fraudulent” voter registration cards. They were all turned in by ACORN volunteers.
- In 2007, in Kansas City, Missouri, four ACORN employees were indicted for fraud.
Answer by Richard Stewart
I can't answer you directly on that one; I am deeply disturbed about the possibilities for fraud in current electronic voting systems, which is why I would like to see us stick with paper ballots for the foreseeable future. I work in software for a living, and I don't think that we can go about doing the software engineering for electronic voting systems the same way one would approach, say, an online message board, or even an accounting system. I think of it as something that should be treated more like the kind of critical computer software which must always correctly operate something like a nuclear power plant or expensive interplanetary space probe. Yet, according to what I have seen, most of the companies building the electronic voting systems don't take the job nearly seriously enough, which will result in systems which can be subverted way too easily.
Computing Sciences Professor Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University is an authority on this kind of thing, and is worth reading.
Sisyphus: The folks I know who are experts on traditional paper balloting consider it far more dangerous than electronic, but as a technologist I can tell you that widespread, undetected fraud is a far bigger threat with the electronic systems. The motivation for fraud and the lack of transparency in the computer approaches for secret ballot are a volatile combination.
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- · May 13, 2012 at 5:26am
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Answer by John Murdoch
Diane,
Yes.
I used to be a Republican party official. Suffice it to say that I discovered clear, compelling evidence of a particularly effective form of voter fraud that was going on in my area.
The scam: absentee ballots. Used to be you had to either a) actually be absent from the district on the day in question, or b) have a doctor's note indicating that you were physically incapable of getting to the polling place. When the rules were changed "to make voting easier" everybody--Republicans and Democrats--understood what that meant.
Open season.
You cannot steal a presidential election. You'd need too many people in too many places. You can, on the other hand, steal a school board election. Or a local ballot initiative. Or a district magistrate election. There are lots of "down ticket" offices that are on the ballot during low-turnout elections (e.g. the municipal primary in the spring following a presidential general election; turnout will likely be under 20%).
You don't need to steal 10,000 votes. If you have 50 votes, you can sway a tight race. If you have 100 votes, you can win a tight race. If you can engineer 300-400 votes--you can put your people on boards, committees, and the magistrate's bench.
How do you come up with 400 votes? Absentee ballots.
Recruit a party loyalist who is a resident in an assisted-living home. Recruit party loyalists who frequent community senior centers. Encourage them to sign up friends and neighbors to receive absentee ballots. Encourage your people to emphasize the importance of getting everybody to vote--Republican or Democrat. Help anybody get an absentee ballot--be extremely helpful in making sure that every ballot is filled out correctly. Do everything by the book.
So where's the fraud?
First--you don't know the names of the people who are running. Sure--you can name the presidential candidates. Can you name the people on your school board? Your local magistrate? Nope--and neither can the rest of us. So your worker can suggest names--and your worker can keep track of voters who vote for the wrong candidate. Depending upon the senior, the worker can practically cast the entire ballot.
The oh-so-helpful volunteer also volunteers to make sure all the ballots get to the county registrar's office. And "loses" the "wrong" ballots along the way. Between the votes you win, and the ballots that get lost, one volunteer can easily score 50 votes.
In Pennsylvania absentee ballots are opened and displayed when ballots are counted. When practically all the absentee ballots that were turned in from a nursing home (including the Democrat county chairman's mother) were marked straight-ticket Republican, the scales fell from my eyes.
If you see large (more than a couple of dozen) absentee ballots being cast, the election is being stolen. The only question is which party is stealing more.
Answer by John Murdoch
Diane,
I do realize you asked this question a couple of weeks ago, but it is cathartic.
If you really need votes for an election, it pays to have friends who are slumlords. There aren't many people who can make a living as a slumlord--but the people who can tend to own a lot of properties. Which means they have a lot of tenants. And a large number of those tenants--these being slums, of course--are behind on their rent, late with their rent, or facing eviction.
Do you need another week to make your rent? Tell you want--you do me a favor, I'll do you a favor. Sign this absentee ballot application, and when the form comes, we'll talk.
The big problem with absentee ballots (and electronic voting has the same problem) is that there is no public outcry. When you go to a polling place, somebody announces your name. If somebody other than Diane Ellis is taking your place, there's evidence. If somebody follows you into the voting booth, there's evidence.
But if you're filling out an absentee ballot at your kitchen table, with your landlord sitting across from you--there's nobody to see. And--since you're three weeks late on your rent, again--you're not in a position to complain. Especially since your landlord doesn't object to you voting for Jerry Brown--he just wants to be sure that you remember to vote for a couple of guys running for County Assessor or Recorder of Deeds or something like that. What's the big deal? Beats getting put on the street.
Get a list of absentee ballot applications from the county registrar--create a map (using a tool like Microsoft MapPoint) that puts those addresses onto a map. Note how many absentee ballots are mailed to multi-tenant housing in very low-income neighborhoods, as well as SRO hotels. Cha-ching! Somebody, probably the landlord, is working for votes.
How big a problem is it? Christian Adams has made a huge deal about the New Black Panthers and voter intimidation in North Philadelphia in the 2010 election. Which is kind of a shame. Because in 2010 more votes were cast in that congressional election...than the U.S. Census found actually living in the district just three months earlier.
That's how big a problem vote fraud is.
John Murdoch: Diane--
Correction: the vote count in North Philadelphia exceeded the number of residents found by the Census in the 2000 election, not (as far as I know) 2010.
- #1
- · March 5, 2012 at 3:37pm
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Answer by John Murdoch
Dear Diane,
No, no--we're still not done.
Still need some votes? Who do you know who works in a group home?
Practically every single adult with mental disabilities in the U.S. is registered to vote. In Pennsylvania, at least, whether the person is registered to vote is specifically brought up during each annual meeting with the Office of Developmental Progress (what we used to call Mental Health/Mental Retardation).
Guess how they vote? Cha-ching! By absentee ballot, of course.
Is your (can I write these words without violating the CofC?) mentally-retarded child still in school? When she turns 18, the school will send home a note--they'll take care of registering her to vote, and her teachers will gladly take her to the polls. It'll be an educational experience! (And a dues-paying teachers' union member will be in the polling place--conveniently located in the school gym--right with her.)
Get a list of group homes and other facilities for the mentally disabled--and compare them to a list of absentee ballot applications (and ballots returned). Cha-ching!
As I wrote above--it's not a question of whether votes are being stolen. It's not a question of whether vote fraud is being done by Republicans or Democrats. It's really a matter of which party is more effective at exploiting the gaping holes in the system that permit anybody--anybody--to steal votes.
Answer by Stuart Creque
There ought to be a law in each state requiring a post-election audit of voter eligibility and incidence of fraud. Because there isn't, and because the budgets of election departments tend to be strained, it's rare that anyone checks for fraud.
Answer by flownover
Check this article just out on Breitbart
http://biggovernment.com/rweiss/2012/01/19/new-york-democrat-voter-fraud-is-a-normal-political-tactic/
sorry no links yet it appears
Busy System Admin: Edit your answer and, unless you are on a mobile device, you should be able to select some text, click the Link button, and specify a URL to link to.
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- · January 19, 2012 at 11:46pm
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Diego Sun Devil: http://biggovernment.com/rweiss/2012/01/19/new-york-democrat-voter-fraud-is-a-normal-political-tactic/
- #2
- · January 20, 2012 at 1:04am
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captainpower: Unfortunately, looks like they changed their link style and their old links don't work. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/01/19/New-York-Democrat--Voter-Fraud-Is-A-Normal-Political-Tactic
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- · August 17, 2012 at 10:21pm
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Answer by Caroline
Here's one from Georgia: http://dailycaller.com/2011/11/24/12-charged-with-voter-fraud-in-georgia-election/
Answer by Roberto
A timely story from Fox News (Jan 19, 2012):
- Eight people have been charged in connection with the ballot fraud investigation, four of which have pleaded guilty
- According to the state police, Renna and DeFiglio both claimed that, ”voter fraud is an accepted way of winning elections, and faking absentee ballots was commonplace.”
Answer by Roberto
More fun and games in Indiana (Dec. 12, 2011)
- The chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party announced his resignation Monday, as investigators probe allegations of election fraud stemming from the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.
- Numerous signatures on petitions that placed then-candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the party's primary ballot were allegedly forged and then certified by the St. Joseph County Voter Registration Office in South Bend
Answer by Rick Bateman
You can just as easily fight the premise of the question, despite the hundreds of examples cited here and elsewhere.
Voter fraud is already illegal. States with these laws all have a provision in the statute that provides for a free ID to anyone, so there is no disparate impact intended or involved. The Indiana Supreme Court noted that there was no testimony to attest the inability to vote due to lack of ID. When SCOTUS upheld the law, they cited much bipartisan support for the decision going back decades (including a commission chaired by Presidents Carter and Ford).
As an aside, it is not against the law for a 30 year old law student to have birth control pills. However, it will be against the edict (having the force of law) of Commissar Sebelius if I don't pay for that birth control. How screwed up is that?
Minority turnout was up in states that instituted Voter ID laws, but most of those seem to have gone into effect just prior to the 2008 election, when minority turnout would have been higher anyways. Just sayin'.
Answer by Tom Lindholtz
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/04/08/DC-Polling-Place-Holder-Ballot
Here is a link to an O'Keefe investigation in which a White young man walks into a Washington, DC, polling place and says that he is Eric Holder and is given Eric Holder's ballot.
Now that is creative genius.
Answer by
A US News and World Report article about how voter fraud seems to be why Al Franken is a senator
Answer by Tom Lindholtz
It's a bit different than fraud, but recall that in the 2008 election there was an incident at one polling place in which Black Panthers dressed in combat fatigues and armed with clubs intimidated voters. The Holder DOJ refused to press the case.
Answer by Paul DeRocco
Counter-question: Has it been demonstrated in recent history that protected minorities are significantly less likely to be able to show a valid ID?
Answer by Roberto
and the hits just keep on coming, (Jan 21, 2012):
- South Carolina's attorney general has notified the U.S. Justice Department of potential voter fraud...analysis found 953 ballots cast by voters listed as dead
Answer by Tom Lindholtz
Here is a link that demonstrates the ease with which voter fraud may be perpetrated in Minnesota.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=GqMVxeZhflI&feature=player_embedded#
Answer by CandE
Here are some additional anecdotes:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/293560/vote-fraud-lightening-strikes-again-hans-von-spakovsky
Hans points to 2 cases in NY and WV in which fraudulent votes were used to sway elections.
-E
Answer by Tom Lindholtz
Here is another link to the ongoing problem: http://www.aim.org/special-report/the-lefts-national-vote-fraud-strategy-exposed/
Answer by Roberto
The madness continues (Sep 5, 2012):
- A Mississippi NAACP executive is in jail after being convicted of voter fraud for fraudulently casting absentee ballots, including for four dead people. Lessadolla Sowers, who is a member of the Tunica County NAACP Executive Committee, was convicted and sentenced in April for what a judge said were crimes that cut “against the fabric of our free society.”
Answer by Tom Lindholtz
Here is a story about a weakness in the system. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/02/3497857/group-says-it-found-30000-dead.html Basically, some state do not vet voter rolls against death certificates, thereby keeping the potential for that form of voter fraud alive. And in some states it is not even permitted to do so.
Answer by MJBubba
A couple of years ago our local Memphis newspaper uncovered votes cast in a close race by dead people. No charges were ever filed in that case.Just last week in Arkansas a Democratic State Representative resigned as he pled guilty to election fraud: http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2012/sep/05/state-representative-pleads-guilty-election-fraud/?f=news-arkansas
Joseph Eagar: Politicians will cite specific, mostly anecdotal examples. Voter fraud is only a problem in really close elections. That's why studies that show it "isn't a problem" because it happens so rarely are bogus: if an election is decided by 500 votes, voter fraud becomes a much bigger issue than if it is decided by a much larger number.
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