Election Fraud

I originally wrote this on July 4, 2020, but just now noticed that I had not posted it on my blog.

If you’d like to study the issues in-depth, at the bottom of this piece I’ve listed 23 sources I read across the spectrum of positions on this issue. 

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.

6.      https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/database-swells-1285-proven-cases-voter-fraud-america 

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.

15.   https://www.ocregister.com/2020/05/17/what-is-ballot-harvesting-and-how-is-it-affecting-southern-california-elections/

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.

19.   https://www.dallasnews.com/news/from-the-archives/2020/04/14/how-absentee-ballots-and-voter-fraud-stopped-texans-from-voting-by-mail/

20.   https://www.dallasnews.com/news/from-the-archives/2020/04/14/how-absentee-ballots-and-voter-fraud-stopped-texans-from-voting-by-mail/

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.

23.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacey_Abrams