Voter fraud can happen more easily than we think (along with just about every other form of election fraud). In the past few weeks, the McCain camp has been hammering away at the voter fraud issue, specifically targeting the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a nationwide advocacy group that has made recent headlines for its vigorous campaign to register new voters—the vast majority of which happen to be poor or working class, and Democrats.
For the $16 million ACORN has poured into the 2008 campaign, the agency has achieved some impressive results: The tallies indicate that it added 1.3 million new voters to the rolls. Of course, whether those 1.3 million registrations actually correspond to 1.3 million human beings is under investigation. In Las Vegas, investigators raided an ACORN office and seized documents based on claims of registration fraud, and authorities in other states are also taking a closer look at the agency’s practices. Allegations are flying around that ACORN employees filled out hundreds, or possibly even thousands of registration cards with fake names, or the names of prison inmates. One man is facing questioning for allegedly registering to vote 10 to 15 times through ACORN (though assuming all the registrations were for himself, and he only votes once, his actions are hardly a crime).
Cue the self-righteous blustering about the perilous state of democracy, which have been countered with charges that the investigations are really just a means of disenfranchising minority voters.
Meanwhile, ACORN is rushing to restore its reputation with a PR blitz including a press release that states the following:
According to [voting rights] experts, spreading fears of fraudulent voting—which happens less often in the U.S. than death by lightning—is done to discredit voter registration efforts and justify restrictive laws that place additional barriers to full participation for all Americans.
For the record, around 90 people per year are killed by lightning in the U.S. Investigators are looking into at least 2,100 possible bogus voter applications in Indiana alone—not to mention thousands more in Ohio, Michigan, and Nevada. So there goes that theory.
But how often does voter fraud [as opposed to the alleged registration fraud] really occur? And if ACORN did in fact fudge registrations, what are their chances of actually getting away with casting fraudulent votes?
Unfortunately, according to Dan Wallach, an e-voting expert and associate professor of computer science at Rice University, the answers to both depend on a number of factors, none of which we know for sure.
“The problem is we don’t have good data on voter fraud,” Wallach told DISCOVER. “If I add fake people to real voting rolls, it’s very difficult to know how much damage I could do. If those fake people were voting by mail, it would be straightforward to inject fake ballots into the real votes. This is much harder to do with polling, since someone has to show up and convince poll employees that they’re a real voter.”
Complicating matters more is that states have different rules regarding what and how much ID voters must show at the polls. “Some states don’t require you to show any ID,” said Wallach, “so if you have five different voter registration cards, you could conceivably vote five different times.”
What we do know is that whether voter fraud become an issue all depends on the margin of victory in November. Given the number of questionable registrations we’re talking about in each state (not all of which are for Democrats), it’s highly unlikely that, even if every one of the alleged fake “voters” managed to cast a ballot, it would affect the outcome.
Then again, there’s always Florida.
Related:
DISCOVER: Protecting Your Vote with Invisible Ink
RB: Voting in America: Let the Pre-Game Mess Begin!
October 14th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Aren’t you mixing up the terms voter fraud with registration fraud? What is happening here is REGISTRATION fraud. VOTER fraud is what would happen if those “at least 2100″ bogus registered voters tried to vote. Yes, states have differing systems of ID validation, but where are some stats on actual bogus VOTERS trying to vote with bad registrations?
Sorry, but this semantic difference that is rarely observed really drives me nuts,
Connie
October 14th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
This is piece, while getting some thing mostly accurate displays a high degree of partial understanding of the voter registration system in the US and so ends up riddled with inaccuracies it pushes the boundaries of belonging in anything related to “science”.
This passage is indicative:
“Meanwhile, ACORN is rushing to restore its reputation with a PR blitz including a press release that states the following:
According to [voting rights] experts, spreading fears of fraudulent voting—which happens less often in the U.S. than death by lightning—is done to discredit voter registration efforts and justify restrictive laws that place additional barriers to full participation for all Americans.
For the record, around 90 people per year are killed by lightning in the U.S. Investigators are looking into at least 2,100 possible bogus voter applications in Indiana alone—not to mention thousands more in Ohio, Michigan, and Nevada. So there goes that theory.”
First, an investigation is not the same thing as proof.
Second, do you know what “possible bogus voter applications” could encompass? Incompletes, duplicates (people already registered when they thought they were not, people who sign multiple cards in a short period of time), bad handwriting, as well as people who do not exist are all reasons why cards could be bad.
Third you are commiting a basic error in defining your terms and you end up comparing apples to oranges. The passage out lighting refers to “voter fraud” - that is, people casting illegal ballots by either claiming to be someone they are not, or voting multiple times, or voting when they are not eligible to do so. From 2002-2005, there were 82 convictions on the Federal level for these offenses. That’s less than 90, even in new math.
The 2100 number refers to voter registrations applications, not votes. And if those applications are determined to be bad, then they will never be put on the rolls and anyone who’s info appears on them will not be able to vote. In other words, the safeguards in the system will have worked. But for the purposes of your cutesy turn of phrase the 2100 number simply doesn’t apply. You want to find instances of people voting illegally. And you will find that it will in fact be fewer people than the number hit by lighting.
For more on this you can go here (which is where you should have gone in the first place): http://projectvote.org/fileadmin/ProjectVote/Publications/Politics_of_Voter_Fraud_Final.pdf
For the truth from the horse’s mouth, you can go here: http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=17855
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October 14th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Nathanhj:
The number of people tried and convicted for voter fraud is in no way an exact calculation of the number of times voter fraud was committed — as any expert will tell you, the data simply isn’t good enough to know exactly how many fraudulent votes were cast in a single election. So tossing around a statistic like the “death by lightning” example without clarification is either wishful thinking, or simply an attempt at spin.
October 14th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
A site devoted to science needs to do a better job of getting things right. This is very poorly done and leaves readers with the wrong impression. You ought to be doing the public a service, but this is actually harmful.
October 14th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Melissa,
Quoting only a an e-voting expert and not a voting law expert doesn’t really give anyone a good idea of what’s going on either. I’m surprise you could not track down Rick Hasen at Loyola in Los Angeles, widely acknowledged to be an expert on voting law or Dan Tokaji at Moritz in Ohio to talk through this stuff. They’ve spent years researching and writing about it.
Further what any legal expert will also tell you is that the amount of voter fraud in the United States is miniscule and has almost no effect on the outcome of elections. They will also tell you things like voter purging, no match no vote laws, voter ID and documentary proof of citizenship requirements keep far more legitimate voters from casting ballots than they stop illegitimate ones.
In the absence of any other metrics, having one that shows actual convictions and one that shows actual prosecutions (both in the reports I referenced above), provide useful context for the relative frequency of this kind of stuff.
October 14th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
@ Connie H - Here in Missouri both election fraud and voter fraud fall under the term “election offenses”. I’m sorry to hear that things like this drive you nuts!
@ Nathanhj - Melissa IS a legal expert! I’m a legal expert too! Guess what? I happen to know a number of legal experts who would disagree with your statement. I contacted both Mr. Hasen and Mr. Tokaji and they both think you spend too much time commenting on blogs.
@ Everyone Else - How can you defend registration/voter fraud?!? Maybe it doesn’t change the outcome of national races, but it’s against the law and it cheapens the right to vote. Can’t we agree that one person one vote is a good idea?
October 14th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
James, Ha Ha. Who’s spending too much time commenting on blogs?
One person one vote is right one. I’m in favor. I’m not defending any fraud. Just pointing out that the problem is small, compared to the firestorm of controversy, and that the real fraud in the vr program is being commited against ACORN by workers who would rather copy from the phone book than do their job. ACORN is required by law to submit all the cards it collects, even the ones it catches as bad, incomplete, or obviously fake. That’s the real deal. In the end you will find that the vast majority of the cards ACORN submitted were for real people who want to cast ballots in November and do it legally.
That doesn’t cheapen the right to vote, it celebrates it.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Given that the Republicans fire their own for not finding evidence of voter fraud where they think it ought to be, the accusations by Republicans that ACORN is involved in any kind of attempt to influence the election by having people casting votes that they are no entitled to cast deserve zero benefit of the doubt.
@James: I think that there is far more danger of concerted efforts at vote caging preventing valid votes than there is of people casting invalid votes. I simply do not believe the accusations of election fraud are made in good faith.
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
Nathanhj, Why would you post links to both project vote and acorn since they are the same organization? They are sister organizations that share offices and press conferences. Small wonder project vote would defend acorn since they are jusy defending themselves. Only one of two viable options here: One you work for them or,2: you do not have a clue. And if acorn cared about trying to actually register voters, they would not hire people they believe will go out and just write down any name they can dream up or copy out of a phone book. If acorn cared about the law, they would make sure their workforce was made up of credible people. This is just the opposite of what they do. They hire people who have broken laws served time or just do not believe credibility matters. This is just a group trying to do whatever they can get away with to get democrats elected. If they were truly non-partisanas their tax exempt status requires, they would not have people going out endorsing O’Bama.