Results of a five-year study on voter fraud in the United States show something that opponents of voter ID bills have been saying for a long time: voter fraud is an over-exaggerated claim, The New York Times reports.
Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.
And what about the rampant voter fraud?
Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.
Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.
In Miami, an assistant United States attorney said many cases there involved what were apparently mistakes by immigrants, not fraud.
In Wisconsin, where prosecutors have lost almost twice as many cases as they won, charges were brought against voters who filled out more than one registration form and felons seemingly unaware that they were barred from voting.
One ex-convict was so unfamiliar with the rules that he provided his prison-issued identification card, stamped “Offender,” when he registered just before voting.
A handful of convictions involved people who voted twice. More than 30 were linked to small vote-buying schemes in which candidates generally in sheriff’s or judge’s races paid voters for their support.
Those pesky sheriff’s and judge’s. You can’t trust them, I say.
Sure, illegalities in elections occur. Look no further than Greene County to see some of the worst examples. But that fraud included absentee ballots, not voter fraud at the polls. But I digress.
So, how did the federal panel handle the findings that rampant voter fraud is actually… a fraud? They downplayed it, of course, and spun it like any good political panel.
Instead, the panel, the Election Assistance Commission, issued a report that said the pervasiveness of fraud was open to debate.
The revised version echoes complaints made by Republican politicians, who have long suggested that voter fraud is widespread and justifies the voter identification laws that have been passed in at least two dozen states.
Thankfully, not all politics is partisan. Some of the Republican members of the panel cared only about getting at the truth.
A number of election law experts, based on their own research, have concluded that the accusations regarding widespread fraud are unjustified. And in this case, one of the two experts hired to do the
report was Job Serebrov, a Republican elections lawyer from Arkansas, who defended his research in an e-mail message obtained by The Times that was sent last October to Margaret
Sims, a commission staff member.“Tova and I worked hard to produce a correct, accurate and truthful report,” Mr. Serebrov wrote,
referring to Tova Wang, a voting expert with liberal leanings from the Century Foundation and co-author of the report. “I could care less that the results are not what the more conservative members of my party wanted.”He added: “Neither one of us was willing to conform results for political expediency.”
The argument behind Voter ID is that voter fraud is so pervasive in the United States that the only way to protect our most important freedom — to choose our leaders — is to demand everyone show photo identification at the polls. That’s bunk…
But what of one of the main arguments from opponents of Voter ID. That complaint: Voter ID will disenfranchise poor, minority and elderly voters.
The report also addressed intimidation, which Democrats see as a more pervasive problem.
And two weeks ago, the panel faced criticism for refusing to release another report it commissioned concerning voter identification laws. That report, which was released after intense pressure from Congress, found that voter identification laws designed to fight fraud can reduce turnout, particularly among members of minorities. In releasing that report, which was conducted by a different set of scholars, the commission declined to endorse its findings, citing methodological
concerns.
Amazing.
If only research and proof were enough to end this politically petty fight, but it’s not. We all know the reason this research and proof is flawed will soon be exposed by the political partisans. Can’t wait. I need another column for next week.
