Section 3: Voter Fraud
Is Voter fraud actually an issue in America today?
Voter fraud has always seemed to find a way to capture the imagination of the American people when it is in the news. Whether it was the mob buying votes in Chicago or the dead supposedly voting in Louisiana, alleged voter fraud repeatedly has been a story in America. Whenever there is a big election, there are usually a few articles that come out and claim rampant voter fraud in one state or another. Here are some headlines following supposed voter fraud in North Carolina in 2012.
While these headlines likely generated a lot of clicks, one claiming more than 35,000 instances of voter fraud, they almost always carry unsubstantiated claims and the stories fade away into oblivion. Usually, it is just clerical errors that end up creating the hysteria of voter fraud. For example, the 35,000 instances of alleged double voting were the result of 35,000 people in North Carolina sharing the same name and birthday as other Americans in different states. This made it appear to some that those North Carolinians were registered and voted in two states, but in reality, it was just a completely different person with the same name and birthday. So the problem here was that Americans are not creative enough when naming their children, not that 35,000 people voted twice in an election. Treating coincidences like this as proof of voter fraud has been a far too prevalent practice.
Continuing on claims of voter fraud that were newsworthy and then fizzled, President Trump claimed that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election, which was why he lost the popular vote.
Trump even created a commission to investigate this claim, but it dissolved in January of 2018 after finding nothing. Like the headlines earlier claiming fraud in North Carolina, this is what often happens with voter fraud claims. They create some buzz when the allegations are first made, but they fail to ever bring any evidence to back up what they are asserting and are often the result of a clerical error. Nonetheless, preventing voter fraud is still the main reason used to justify voter ID laws. Politicians assert we need to protect our elections, as they are sacred to our democracy. They believe voter fraud is still an issue we need to fix and prevent. Here is a clip of Rudy Giuliani talking about how voter fraud is still an issue we have today leading to the 2016 election. Giuliani makes some astounding, and unsubstantiated claims about the probability of voter fraud and how often he has seen it in his career.
More recently, in early April of 2018 Trump again made a debunked claim of millions voting illegally in the 2016 election. This claim has been thoroughly debunked and Trump saying this serves as an example of politicians trying to drum up fear about nonexistent voter fraud.
Quickly, let's look at what voter fraud is, and how voter ID laws are supposed to prevent it. Voter fraud can consist of impersonating someone and voting for them, voting in multiple states in the same election and falsifying one's registration. The stated goal of voter ID laws is to make sure everyone proves they are who they say they are before they cast a vote. Interestingly enough, voter ID laws requiring some sort of ID card can only really tackle the issue of voter impersonation. In theory, voter ID sounds like a simple way to prevent voter fraud, but only if there is actually an issue of people committing voter fraud, and specifically impersonation. Because if there isn't an existence of voter fraud, what are voter ID laws accomplishing? Let's look and see if this problem truly exists, or if the dangers of voter fraud are drastically overblown.
So is voter fraud an actual issue?
The data says no. Overwhelmingly No. Just No.
Since the year 2000, voter fraud has been extremely rare in America. There likely wasn’t much before 2000, but the data is not as readily available. From 2000 to 2014, fraud, or impersonations that could be prevented by voter ID laws, was found to be almost nonexistent in our elections. Professor of law at Loyola Law School, Justin Levitt did a comprehensive study looking at the prevalence of fraud in primary and general federal elections during the 2000 to 2014 period. He investigated every allegation of fraud, not just convictions, and evaluated how many could have been prevented by voter ID laws. During the 14 years he investigated, about 1 billion votes were cast in federal elections. Levitt found only 31 credible allegations of potential voter fraud that might have been prevented by requiring an ID at the polling place. So out of a billion votes cast, 31 were possibly fraudulent votes that could have been stopped by the stringent voter ID laws states like Wisconsin have imposed. Voter impersonation in America happens about 0.00000000031% of the time, or in 1 out of every 32 plus million votes.
To attempt to put that number into perspective, which is admittedly difficult, here are some things that are more likely to happen to you than an American impersonating someone at the polls:
1. You are more likely to be struck by lightning TWICE in your lifetime (1 in 9,000,000).
2. You are much more likely to die from flesh-eating bacteria (1 in 1,000,000).
3. Finally, you are more likely to be killed by a dog (1 in 18,000,000).
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Even though all these occurrences are more likely than voter impersonation, we don’t see our politicians passing legislation to protect us from dogs and lightning. However, 33 states have deemed the issue of voter impersonation so severe that they have passed laws to curb it. 33 states passed laws to stop a problem that from the data simply does not exist!
These laws, while possibly able to prevent 1 in 32 million cases of voter impersonation, have downsides that put obstacles in the way of voting for many Americans. Is it worth stopping the incredibly rare case of voter impersonation at the cost of keeping hundreds of thousands of voters at home come Election Day?
This is the detrimental issue of voter fraud prevention that negatively affects our elections for no good reason. Voter fraud is not a problem, yet our response to this made up problem creates actual problems. Like we discussed in the previous section, 11 percent of eligible voters lack government-issued ID. 11 percent of voters are millions of people who have it more difficult to vote because of voter ID laws. So millions of people are affected by legislation designed to prevent something that happens every 1 in 32 million times.
I wanted to see the pro-voter ID point of view so I research one of their most outspoken fans, the Heritage Foundation. I dived into the website of this pro-voter ID law group expecting to find many claims of widespread voter fraud to back up their claims on the necessity of voter ID. But to my surprise, their page on voter fraud discussed only 11 instances of voter fraud dating back to 1982. They say voter fraud is more prevalent and goes unnoticed, but come on. Only 11 examples? They should read professor Levitt's study I mentioned earlier so they could add 3 more to their tiny list. This shocked me and I would recommend you check it out yourself keeping in mind this is the group that wants to show rampant voter fraud.
But damning data aside, I wanted to see what they asserted voter ID laws were needed for. The Heritage Foundation website says protecting the vote is important because even small-scale voter fraud can swing elections. “It is not the magnitude of voter fraud. In close or disputed elections, and there are many, a small amount of fraud could make the margin of difference.” I understand the point they are making, I really do, but they are failing to appreciate that while they may be able to stop one vote cast illegally that could decide the outcome, the thousands of potential voters that stayed home because of the ID laws are much more likely to make up the margin of difference between the candidates and decide the election.
Leaving hypotheticals and thinking about this with the Wisconsin example we used in the previous section; an estimated 17,000-23,000 people did not vote on Election Day due to the voter ID laws. President Trump carried the state by approximately 20,000 votes. Voter fraud was not the reason behind this margin of victory; if anything, it was voter suppression.
In conclusion, there is no logical reason for voter ID laws as they aim to fix a non-existent issue. Americans do not impersonate other Americans at the polls. The data tells us it just doesn't happen. Voter ID laws aren't solving any problems and only lead to less participation in our elections, which in turn, makes them less democratic.