I originally wrote this on July 4, 2020, but just now noticed that I had not posted it on my blog.
On the one
hand, President Trump and Kris Kobach make exaggerated claims of voter
fraud. On the other hand, studies that
suggest there is no (or insignificantly little) election fraud miss the point. Even before I started my research, I was
aware of many cases which justified concern about election fraud.
In my opinion,
we clearly are subject to election fraud and should take steps to reduce that
risk. I’ve selected five risks which I
rank as follows:
1)
The greatest risk relates to electronic fraud
because electronic fraud has the highest likelihood of changing the outcome of
the election
2)
The second greatest of these 5 risks is allowing
people to collect and submit ballots.
3)
Mail-in voting is the third greatest risk.
4)
Individual in-person voting fraud has existed
throughout the history of our country.
5)
Same-day registration seems unnecessary and
facilitates mischief.
Note that I
have left out risks such as election official misbehavior or mistakes,
registration fraud, etc. Such exposures
might be more important than items on my list and should be addressed.
I’ve also
left out issues that affect voting decisions but are not directly related to the
voting process (such as false claims about Hillary Clinton running a child porn
ring in the basement of a pizza parlor or suppressing information about Hunter
Biden).
Studies that
suggest that voter fraud (or a particular type of voter fraud) is not a problem
suffer from the following:
a)
The Heritage Foundation has documented 1285
cases of election fraud, so fraud does occur and some of the studies failed to
find known cases of election fraud.
b)
It seems clear that the Heritage Foundation data
is the “tip of the iceberg”. Most
election fraud is probably never identified.
c)
The significance of election fraud is not
measured by its frequency; it is measured by its impact in having changed
election results and potential to change future election results and the
possible reduced confidence of the public in our election process.
d)
It is prudent to protect against election fraud
even if it has not occurred. For
example, I am not aware of any case of successful electronic election fraud,
but we certainly should take precautions to avoid it.
I haven’t
studied electronic threats and protections hence do not address them in this
piece.
Generally,
relatives have been able to submit ballots for voters, which seems to have
worked fine. But allowing anyone to collect
ballots creates risks that seem intuitively obvious. Solicitors (sometimes paid) have aggressively
sought ballots. A legislator who voted
to allow anyone to collect ballots had a change of mind due to
unintended consequences. The ACLU makes
the best case4 I’ve seen for ballot collectors, in this case
specific to Native Americans in Montana.
There may be a way to support the needs of Native Americans on
reservations without exposing our elections to so much risk nationwide.
Mail-in
ballots clearly expose us to similar risks, particularly when ballots are
automatically mailed to very inaccurate voter registration lists. Sending ballots to dead people, to wrong
addresses, etc. presents unnecessary risk.
A Heritage Foundation list of steps to reduce fraud risk in mail-in
balloting is attached. I have not
studied it carefully, but some of its ideas seem good. My point is that the Heritage list should be
discussed in good faith so we can establish the best system possible.
Cleaning
up voter lists is an important action which is legally mandated. However, there are examples of purging people
improperly. For example, Steven Mulroy documents13
that someone in Georgia was temporarily removed for a missing hyphen in a
hyphenated name and that North Dakota required residential street addresses,
but rural Native Americans often have only a P. O. Box. Even though someone can overcome such purges,
I don’t think they should have been purged.
The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution11 (AJC) provides more information about
Georgia’s July 2017 purging of 560,000 voters who had not voted in 7 years nor
responded to a mailing, noting that the number was so large because no purging
had been done since 2013. By March 2020
(more than 2.5 years later), 87,000 had re-registered. Most of them had not been aware that their
registration had been revoked. 30,000
re-registered too late to vote in the 2018 gubernatorial election. Of those who re-registered and identified
their race, 46.7% were non-white, compared to 41.1% non-white among all Georgia
voters who identified their race. Of
those who completed provisional ballots in 2018, only one-fourth were
accepted. There are now 7.2 million
registered voters in GA. My analysis:
1.
15.5% of the 560,000 should not have been
purged. (Perhaps a few more should not
have been purged, but as they hadn’t voted for 7 years and did not vote in the
next 2.5 years, it seems moot.)
2.
Most re-registered in time to vote in the 2018 election. So, their votes were properly counted.
3.
Most of those who re-registered after the 2018
election probably made no effort to vote in 2018. They generally never knew they were purged
because they were automatically re-registered when they renewed their driver’s
license. Apparently no 2018 votes were
lost relative to this group.
4.
So, it seems the purge did not lose a meaningful
number of 2018 votes. And, as any lost
votes would not have been 100% for either party, the impact was even smaller.
5.
Unfortunately, the AJC did not report how many
people requested provisional ballots.
These ballots could have come from purged voters or others. I am concerned that some people who should
have gotten provisional votes may not have gotten them. But complaints about Republican voter
suppression were focused on counties where Democrats ran the elections, chose
polling places, recruited election workers, etc. I doubt those Democrats would have
intentionally denied provisional ballots to likely Democratic voters and don’t
see how Republicans could be blamed for that.
I
am also concerned that only 25% of the provisional votes were eventually
counted. It seems significant that the
election commission concluded that their votes were not valid.
6.
Stacey Abrahms lost the 2018 Georgia
gubernatorial election by 50,000 votes23, so it seems clear that the
purge could not have affected the result. (Note: As I was re-reading this and some
sources, I noticed that Wikipedia says that Governor Kemp purged another
140,000 voters during his 2015-2019 term in office. I have not studied that purge.) More than 4 million votes were cast compared
to 2.5 million in the previous such election, 4 years earlier. The 60%
increase in the number of votes cast is a tribute to Ms. Abrahms and her
organization. With such an increase in voters, it seems unlikely that
other irregularities could have existed that dampened voting much.
7.
Although the election result was not impacted,
the purge process was worth reviewing and has since been improved.
The ACLU
describes Ohio’s practice3 (allowed by the US Supreme Court) as:
“Ohioans who don’t vote for two years are
sent a nondescript postcard from the Ohio secretary of state’s office
requesting a confirmation of their address. If those voters don’t respond to
the notice or vote within the next two federal election cycles (or four years),
they are kicked off the rolls without further notice.”
If that is
accurate, the approach should be improved.
The communication should indicate that voting rights are at stake and preferably
a second communication would be added.
Recognize however, that if someone gets purged and does not know that
they are purged, it will NOT affect their likelihood of trying to vote and if
they then learn that they’ve been purged, they can vote provisionally.
Claims that
Republicans are committing voter suppression or stealing elections are
frequently exaggerated, misleading, or even entirely false. The ACLU identifies errors3 made
by AR and VT. It is not clear to me that
such clerical errors justify the “voter suppression” label and the voting
process provides what should be acceptable recourse.
The ACLU
writes3 that “The fact that these [CT: felony disenfranchisement] laws
vary so dramatically [CT: by state] only adds to the overall confusion that
voters face, which is a form of voter suppression in itself.” That makes no sense to me. Is the ACLU claiming that politicians in
different states colluded long ago to have different laws relative to felon
voting rights, possibly passed many years apart, in order to confuse felons who
relocated from one state to the other?
Georgia and Kentucky have been prominently in
the news recently:
·
I discussed Georgia’s 2018 issues above. This year, the Democrats complained about
voter suppression in Georgia again. According to the NY Times17,
Stacey Abrahms created an organization (Fair Fight Action) to contest purging
of 100,000 voter registrations. A judge
appointed by President Obama ruled that the purges were legal. 1.075
million votes were cast in the Democratic primary,
more than 3.5 times as many as in 2016 (this might not be completely an
apples-to-apples comparison, but the sources seem meaningful). Were the
Republicans guilty of voter suppression? Would suppressing the vote in a Democratic
primary be important to them? Yes,
according to the Democrats, but a political science professor at Emory College concluded
that the Republican Secretary of State (Brad Raffensperger) stimulated the
turn-out by mailing an application for an absentee ballot to each registered
voter and encouraging voting by mail. Again, the Democratic charges relate to
Dekalb and Fulton counties, where over 70% of the Board of Commissioners are
Democrats and the chairs are African-American Democrats.
·
Kentucky experienced terribly long poll lines
after the Democratic governor (Andy Beshear) issued an executive order
restricting voting as a precaution due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Both Republican and Democratic politicians
objected but were overruled by a judge.
Ignoring the fact that a decree by a Democrat led to the back-ups, the
national Democratic PR machine (including Hillary Clinton) charged Republicans
with having suppressed the vote in Kentucky.
To his credit, Governor Beshear dispelled
those reports.
Voter ID:
There are legitimate concerns that some voters lack ID cards. Clearly, the solution to that problem is to
help them get ID cards. They need such
cards to be able to process fundamental transactions in our society. It does not make sense to me to undermine our
ability to control election fraud because of a problem that should be fixed
independently.
Concern about
the lack of ID cards could also be addressed by deferring the effective date of
voter ID laws, by including short-term substitutes perhaps as little as a
pledge, etc. Exempting some classes (for
example, by age) might address some of the concerns, but might not be legal.
Expanding the
permitted list of ID cards also seems reasonable in some states. I don’t know why WI did not allow Veterans
Administration ID cards3 nor why TX did not to permit University of
TX ID cards3.
I support
expanded voting hours (evenings, week-ends and early voting).
I’m not a fan
of same-day registration, as the need is not clear and it facilitates
mischief. There are lengthy periods for
registration, so why shouldn’t voters have been able to register on time? What is the hardship imposed by having a
reasonable before-the-election registration date? Same-day registration facilitates efforts to
bribe citizens to vote, as they can be found, paid and transported on election
day to register and vote immediately.
Nonetheless, I am not unalterably opposed.
The ACLU
writes3 “ New
York requires voters to register at least 25 days before the election,
which imposes an unnecessary burden on the right to vote. By forcing voters to
register before the election even becomes salient to the public, it discourages
people from registering in the first place.”
Elections are not salient until 3 weeks or less before the election
date? If elections are two years apart,
allowing registration for 705 of those 730 days is an undue burden? I wouldn’t object to shortening the 25-day
period, but I don’t agree with the ACLU’s argument.
Our history
is replete with evidence of election fraud, for example in New York City
(Tammany Hall) and Chicago. There is
reason for the historical imploration to “vote early and often” and for
references to “dead people voting”.
Since I’ve
lived in Kansas, a nearby MO state house race was won by 1 or 2 votes (improper
votes from outside the district were found to have swung the election). ACORN was exposed in a major
government-funded scandal of fraudulent voter registration. (I am not aware that those fraudulent
registrations resulted in votes, but fraudulent registrations in the hands of a
politically-inspired group clearly should raise serious concern.) To test the system, someone sent 13 people to
vote in the name of other people. Twelve
of the 13 “voters” were successful in voting fraudulently. The only one who was caught had the
misfortune of trying to convince the poll volunteer that he was her son!
We can do
more to protect our elections without unduly negatively impacting voter
participation. It would help if our politicians and advocacy groups worked
together to improve our processes instead of misleading the public in order to
arouse them.
Claude Thau
July 4, 2020
Sources for more information (the numbering is NOT
intended to indicate relative value).
1.
https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/voting-rights/:
Excellent piece including the right to a provisional vote if the registrar does
not find your name on the registration list and how to get the provisional
vote.
2.
https://www.aclu.org/issues/voting-rights/ has a wealth of information, including the
following subsites.
3.
https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-voter-suppression-in-2020/
4.
https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/this-law-makes-voting-nearly-impossible-for-native-americans-in-montana/ Explains the importance of ballot collection
for Native Americans in Montana.
5.
https://www.aclukansas.org/en/news/kansas-aclu-introduces-election-protection-hotline-assist-voters:
The ACLU has created hot lines in various languages to report voting problems
in various states.
7.
https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud?_ga=2.242513284.705159274.1593868296-1581601644.1593868296 Data base of 1285 cases they have found.
8.
https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2020-05/FS_188_NEW.pdf:
standards for mail-in voting
9.
https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/heritage-explains/voter-fraud
10.
https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/covid-19-and-ebola-what-we-can-learn-prior-elections Liberia success with in-person elections
despite Ebola and WI success with COVID-19
11.
https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/many-eligible-georgia-voters-were-canceled-nation-largest-purge/jRlixHpVs0I9wVQYdDjxvM/ Valuable data about Georgia’s 2017 purge
12.
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/494649-the-voter-fraud-fraud (I sent
some questions to the author, law professor Steven Mulroy)
13.
https://www.memphis.edu/law/documents/01_mulroy.pdf. Also written by
Steven Mulroy.
pp 963-968 on Good examples of
overly restrictive requirements/purges
“Fortunately,
it appears that the computer program most associated with these types of overly
restrictive voter purges has decreased in usage in the last few years,
indicating some hope that the worst abuses are on the decline.”
14. www.dailysignal.com/2020/04/10/potential-for-fraud-is-why-mail-in-elections-should-be-dead-letter/
Lots of meaningful examples of fraud.
16.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/trumps-latest-voter-fraud-misinformation/: “While the instances of voter fraud via
mail-in or absentee ballots are more common than in-person voting fraud,
the number of known cases is relatively rare.” I added the italics.
17.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/us/elections/georgia-voters-purge.html
18.
https://votingrights.news21.com/article/about/: Students
engaged in this study may have started with the idea that voters’ rights were
being infringed.
21. https://scholars.org/sites/scholars/files/ssn_key_findings_minnite_on_the_myth_of_voter_fraud.pdf
22. https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legal-work/Briefing_Memo_Debunking_Voter_Fraud_Myth.pdf has a
long list of studies concluding that voter fraud is infinitesimal. It argues that statistics are overstated when
they include “any and all credible claims”, essentially pretending that no
unknown voter fraud exists. The list also
extols studies which are obviously incorrect because they fail to report known
cases of voter fraud. This may be the
most biased of the sources I read.
