June 12, 2012: Press Reports State Efforts to Prevent ‘Voter Fraud’ Disenfranchises Poor, Minority, Elderly Voters

Rolling Stone magazine reports that despite no evidence of voter fraud except in extremely isolated incidents, Republicans in over a dozen states are passing laws that disenfranchise voters under the guise of “protecting the vote” (see August 30, 2011). The voters most affected by these laws, the magazine reports, are more likely to vote Democratic in national and state elections. Governor Rick Scott (R-FL), who is fighting the Justice Department to allow him to purge hundreds of thousands of voters from the state electoral rolls, has said: “We need to have fair elections. When you go out to vote, you want to make sure that the other individuals that are voting have a right to vote.” However, a 2007 study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law shows that almost every allegation of voter fraud is false. The chance of a vote being fraudulent, according to the study, is 0.0004 percent (see 2007).
Double Voting - Many claim that “double voting,” or a single voter casting a vote twice or more, is a rampant issue. In reality, it almost never occurs. The allegations that are made almost always result from different people with similar or even identical names casting separate votes, or simple clerical errors, such as voters being counted as having cast their ballots when in reality they did not. In Missouri in 2000 and again in 2002, hundreds of “double votes” were alleged to have been cast, with some allegations saying that the same voter cast their votes in Kansas and Missouri. When reporters and other investigators looked into the claims, only four cases were shown to have been actual double voting, for a documented fraud rate of 0.0003 percent.
Dead Voters - These are allegations that living people cast ballots using the names of dead voters. Almost every allegation of this nature has proven to stem from flawed matches of death records and voter rolls. In the 2000 Georgia elections, allegations of 5,412 “dead voter” votes were made over the last 20 years. All but one of those allegations turned out to be an incorrect match between death records and voter rolls. One example: “Alan J. Mandel,” who died in 1997, apparently cast a vote in 1998. In reality, voter Alan J. Mandell—two Ls—cast a legitimate vote. Election workers checked the wrong name off their list.
Voting with Fraudulent Addresses - The allegation is that people use fraudulent addresses to register to vote. Such allegations usually stem from mail coming back from the given address marked undeliverable. In almost every instance, the person in question has moved, the individual piece of mail was misdelivered or misaddressed, or the address is recorded incorrectly. In one instance, New Hampshire election officials became concerned when 88 voters had registered to vote using similar addresses from property belonging to Daniel Webster College. The addressees were legitimate: all 88 voters were students at that school who lived on college property.
Voting by Convicted Felons - This is a favorite allegation: that convicted felons stripped of their right to vote have voted anyway. It happens more often than some other forms of alleged voter fraud, but in almost every case, the felon in question was unaware that his or her right to vote had been taken away, a misapprehension often reinforced by misinformed election officials. Even then, almost every instance of “felon voters” turns out to be a case of clerical error: someone was convicted of a crime that does not result in their right to vote being removed, typographical errors, voters with names similar to that of convicted felons, and so forth. In the 2000 Florida elections, the state claimed that 5,643 ineligible felons had cast illegal votes. The list provided by the state was almost completely populated by eligible voters who were misidentified as ineligible felons.
Voting by Noncitizens - Allegations that US elections are being “thrown” by huge numbers of illegal immigrants casting their votes are widespread. In reality, there is not one case of an illegal immigrant intentionally casting an illicit vote. For example, Washington state officials investigated the citizenship of 1,668 registered voters in 2005, after allegations that they were illegal aliens were raised based on their “foreign-sounding names.” Every one of the voters on the list was legitimate.
Registration Fraud - On occasion, fraudulent registration forms do get submitted. However, the number of cases where a person submitted a form in someone else’s name in order to impersonate that person is extremely small. Some people fill out the forms with deliberately ridiculous information (such as claiming their name to be “Mickey Mouse”), while others make honest mistakes filling out the forms. In a few cases, voter registration workers working on commission have committed fraud in order to make more money. The Brennan Center report found: “Most reports of registration fraud do not actually claim that the fraud happens so that ineligible people can vote at the polls. Indeed, we are aware of no recent substantiated case in which registration fraud has resulted in fraudulent votes being cast.”
Voting by Dogs - The Brennan Center found nine instances of people registering their dogs to vote. Six of those were from people trying to prove a point: that they could register their dogs to vote. (The penalty for registering a dog to vote is up to 30 years in federal prison.) The Brennan report documented two cases of someone casting a vote in the name of a dog. One was submitted in Venice, California, with the word “VOID” and a paw print drawn on the ballot, and another, also cast in Venice, California, was submitted under the name of “Raku Bowman.”
Vote Buying - Rolling Stone notes that this does happen on rare occasions, with campaign officials or others convincing voters to vote for a particular candidate in return for money, food, or cigarettes. But, the magazine notes, this is vote buying, not voter fraud. It, too, is illegal, and will not be curbed by voter ID laws and the like.
Fraud by Election Officials - Like vote buying, this happens on rare occasions, but is not voter fraud per se. Rolling Stone writes, “If election officials are willing to break the law, rules designed to restrict voting won’t stop them.” [Rolling Stone, 6/12/2012]