The Fraud Of Voter Fraud

Aug. 26, 2016

Donald Trump says if he loses in Ohio or Pennsylvania, both of which voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, it will be because of “rigged” voting. That makes him the first presidential candidate in memory, and maybe ever, making excuses for a loss months before the election takes place.

The culprit, according to Trump and others, is voter fraud. Just how bad is this problem that’s motivated more than 30 states to enact rules making it more difficult for people to vote? Not very.

Let’s start with Pennsylvania, home of the predicted rigged presidential election.

The Pennsylvania Legislature passed a fairly strict voter identification law to stop the scourge of voter fraud. At least that’s what Republican state leaders claimed. As was the case everywhere such laws were passed, there was a court challenge.

The state was unable to provide even a single instance of voter identification fraud — not one — and a state judge tossed the new law.

Both Wisconsin and North Carolina enacted similar laws; but neither could demonstrate a problem being solved, and both laws were struck down by federal courts. Those courts were especially concerned the new laws most adversely impacted minorities, the majority of whom vote for Democrats. A cynic might suggest the new laws were designed specifically to disenfranchise them.

(Michigan legislators took a different approach, trying to eliminate straight-party voting. What a surprise that those areas with the most straight-ticket ballots were in heavily Democratic southeastern Michigan! A federal court tossed the new law.)

Most of the faux concern for voter identification laws was birthed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is obsessed with the idea that illegal immigrants are fraudulently voting. (He also helped author most states’ new anti-illegal-immigrant laws, nearly all of which have been undone by the federal courts.)

Kobach decided to prove his theory and launched a huge effort to analyze votes. He and his staff looked at a whopping 84 million votes cast in 22 different states. They found 14 cases of alleged voter fraud.

Texas, similarly afflicted with the notion of illegal immigrants voting, studied a decade’s worth of elections encompassing 42 million total votes. They found 85 cases they considered fraud, which included cases of convicted felons who had tried to vote, people who had voted in the wrong precinct, a couple of people who had voted twice, and a lot of good old-fashioned human error.

They did not discover one illegal immigrants who had tried to vote. And with good reason.

Voting leaves a paper trail — or at least a computer trail. People here illegally are not inclined to leave such trails with the government, so they don’t do something so foolish as attempt to vote.

The overwhelming majority of alleged voter fraud turns out to be simple human error absent any intent to defraud. And there are already state and federal laws on the books for any real voter fraud, but fewer than 20 prosecutions occur annually at either the state or federal level.

There are, of course, exceptions. Most at risk are small communities with old-fashioned political machines and ancient voting systems where a few votes, or a few dozen, can swing an election.

Then there was Illinois in 1982, the last of the elections with prosecuted and proven widespread fraud. The gubernatorial race between Republican Jim Thompson and Democrat Adlai Stevenson, III, was close and contentious. Stevenson, believing fraud in the rural parts of the state might have cost him the election, demanded and received a recount.

Plenty of systemic fraud was found, but nearly all of it was in Cook County and favored Stevenson, not Thompson. As many as 100,000 votes were fraudulently cast, and nearly 700 people were either convicted or pleaded guilty to various counts of election fraud.

Importantly, it was the first time investigators used computers to track and confirm voting patterns and individual votes. Voter fraud forever became more difficult. As computerized voting machines started cropping up — especially those machines that count your vote as soon as the machine grabs your ballot — cheating became a real chore.

It’s likely an industrious and clever computer hacker could penetrate our computerized voting world and reprogram the software to create all kinds of mischief, including vote fraud. Hackers always seem to be a step ahead of those trying to stop them. But flipping lots of votes would be too obvious, and changing a few here and there would be arduous. Plus, investigators now have software designed to catch all but the most devious cheaters.

Democrats rigging Pennsylvania, with more than 5.6 million votes likely being cast for president, is absurd. Nor is it likely necessary, considering the state’s recent voting history and the current polls.

The real fraud here is the accusation of voter fraud.