Voter Fraud That Isn't: Tricks of the Voter Suppression Trade

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OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_project__071101_voter_fraud_that_isn.htm


Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

From the technological glitches to voter intimidation reports to well-hyped charges of "voter fraud," American voters are well aware of problems in our system of casting and counting ballots. However, a range of these problems are often confused and conflated with "voter fraud" in media stories, trumped-up accusations, and, most insidiously, in voter suppression attempts. The truth of "voter fraud" is much simpler than many people would have us believe. This proves to be an inconvenient reality for those individuals engaged in systematic attempts to disenfranchise specific voting populations, much like the efforts that have been laid bare at the Department of Justice over the past eight months.

"Voter fraud, to the extent it exists at all, involves real people casting ballots despite knowing that they are ineligible to vote," wrote James Sample of the Brennan Center for Justice in this Politico opinion piece. "As a practical matter, voter fraud involves extraordinary criminal risk, including prison and fines, for almost zero personal gain."

Although there is only one qualifier for voter fraud, a number of election administration problems are thrown under the "voter fraud" umbrella to stir up trouble, intimidate voters and justify disenfranchising laws, such as voter identification requirements. Incomplete voter registration applications and shoddy voter caging attempts, among other issues, cause applications to be rejected or candidates to be accused of fraud when actual "voter fraud" is not the issue...In 2004, "voter fraud" was deemed a non-issue by fired U.S. Attorney John McKay, which he said cost him his job. That year, a close Washington gubernatorial race brought strong accusations of voter fraud, which McKay dismissed on lack of evidence, Sample wrote. Recently, McKay spoke out, claiming the U.S. Inspector General may recommend criminal prosecutions of Gonzales in the coming weeks.

Voter caging operations or voter challenges based on returned mailings are often billed as evidence of massive voter fraud, although the voter caging lists are, in fact, only evidence of returned mailings. Project Vote found that media campaigns immediately before elections played a key role in voter caging efforts by calling press conferences to announce the mass challenges. Frequently, the pre-election media campaigns alleging voter fraud were as vigorously carried out as the challenges themselves. Read more on voter caging in this Project Vote report...Another facet of the effort to improve election administration and stop "voter fraud" is focused on voter lists, through the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). HAVA requires states to create centralized, statewide databases of registered voters, a requirement that has created a transitional "mess," Sample wrote...The transition involves removing existing, but no longer active voters (defined differently from state to state) from the voting rolls while blocking new, but ineligible voters from the rolls entirely. However, there are major challenges in the list maintenance procedures that can potentially deny or remove legitimate voters. Blocking new, but ineligible voters by matching their voter registration data with existing government lists (e.g. state motor vehicle and Social Security Administration databases) is risky because of problems inherent in the data matching process. "ypographical errors, maiden names for the married, married names for the divorced, transposed fields, improperly hyphenated compound names" and a host of other discrepancies between any two given databases can lead to eligible voters being denied their right to vote....finally, states are passing stringent voter ID requirements that disenfranchise rightful voters, particularly the elderly, the poor and minorities," Sample wrote. "As election scholar Rick Hasen has pointed out, it is not an accident that legislatures have passed or proposed such legislation on party-line votes."...Instead of solving election administration issues, including list maintenance, lawmakers have just served to undermine public faith in elections, exacerbated by the phantom issue of voter fraud. That faith is further weakened by the increasing exposure of a politicized Justice Department where policies and issues that suppress voting rights supersede protection of those rights. As Sample suggests, "In evaluating reforms, federal and state lawmakers alike should eschew the rhetorical distraction of 'voter fraud' and employ rigorous cost-benefit analysis."





Erin Ferns is a Research and Policy Analyst with Project Vote's Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD).

Authors Website: www.projectvote.org

Authors Bio: Project Vote is the leading technical assistance and direct service provider to the civic participation community. Since its founding in 1982, Project Vote has provided professional training, management, evaluation and technical services on a broad continuum of key issues related to voter engagement and participation in low-income and minority communities.


I'M IN MICHIGAN, WORKING THE POLLS TUESDAY. TODAY I WAS TRAINED IN THE NEW "VOTER PHOTO ID" LAW AND HOW TO COMPLY WITH IT. THIS LAW WAS BEGUN UNDER GOP GOVERNOR, PUT ON HOLD FOR YEARS OF COURT CHALLENGES, AND NOW WILL BE IMPLEMENTED.

THE MICH. ATTY. GENERAL ARGUED BEFORE THE COURT THAT MICHIGAN NEEDED THIS LAW TO PREVENT "VOTER FRAUD" WHILE ADMITTING THAT THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE OF SAME IN THE STATE! HE IS A LOYAL MEMBER OF THE GOP, NEEDLESS TO SAY, AND THE COURT HAS BEEN PACKED WITH GOP JUDGES FOR YEARS....