Vote Fraud

Vote fraud disenfranchises Americans and poses a serious threat to both the integrity of and confidence in our electoral system. Opponents of measures to prevent vote fraud contend that its occurrence is either nonexistent or so rare as to be insignificant.

Vote fraud is insidious, committed quietly. And once it’s committed, it cannot be undone. Vote fraud contaminates the pool of votes, and if sufficiently extensive, will affect the outcome of an election. As elections determine who exercises political power, there is a motivation among some bad actors to cheat.

Vote fraud is rarely prosecuted for two main reasons. First, it is virtually impossible to identify the fraud before the damage is done as it is primarily committed through absentee and mail-in balloting; second, prosecuting the crime is expensive and is usually a low priority of prosecutors and local law enforcement more concerned with public safety. However, vote fraud is a crime that strikes at the center of our republic.

The principal weakness in our electoral system that fosters vote fraud is inaccurate voter registration rolls. The federal requirement that counties maintain clean, accurate voter rolls has been ignored over the years and actively resisted under the Obama Department of Justice.

Voter rolls should contain only the names of eligible residents of a jurisdiction, but in far too many counties, voter rolls bulge with the names of the dead, those who have moved away, non-citizens, fictional names and voters registered in more than one place.

A Pew Center on the States study in 2012 revealed that:

Approximately 24 million—one of every eight—voter registrations in the United States were no longer valid or were significantly inaccurate.
More than 1.8 million deceased individuals were listed as voters.
Approximately 2.75 million people had registrations in more than one state.

In nearly 200 counties around the nation, more people are registered to vote than the counties’ population of eligible citizens. Examples abound of non-citizens and convicted felons registered to vote. In Philadelphia, an ACRU lawsuit in 2016 revealed thousands of ineligible people on the voter rolls. A sampling of counties in Virginia also found hundreds of illegal registrations, according to a 2016 study by the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

In-person vote fraud, while far more rare than absentee voting, does happen, as shown by the video sting operations of Project Veritas, in which an impersonator at a polling place in the District of Columbia claimed to be then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. and easily obtained a ballot. In other Project Veritas videos political operatives openly discussed how to commit vote fraud in Wisconsin and other states.

The institutional Left has focused on preventing common-sense laws to require voters to prove they are who they claim they are, making the ridiculous and unprovable claim that photo ID laws discriminate against racial minorities and the poor. But, vote fraud is accommodated by other means such as extended voting periods and relaxed standards for acquiring absentee or mail-in ballots and not requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

Several reasonable actions should be adopted to guard against vote fraud:

enforce federal voter roll maintenance laws;
require photo ID to vote in person;
require voter ID and signature verification for absentee ballots;
limit early voting to no more than a week prior to an election;
require proof of U.S. citizenship;
encourage more states to participate in cooperative efforts to identify voters registered in more than one state.

Voting is a privilege of citizenship and only legal votes should be counted. The only way to stop vote fraud is to prevent it!

ACRU Commentary

Heloise Gets It about How to Prevent Vote Fraud

The household advice column "Hints from Heloise" weighed in this week on the importance of accurate voter registration rolls: Dear Heloise: In 2012, my father died, and in 2014, I was still getting voter mailings in his name. I went to the voter-registration office in our town and had his name removed. I also checked when we went to vote to make sure his name was removed. I did the same last year for my mother. By doing this, no one can use their names to vote. - Nancy J. in North Carolina Dear Nancy: I am sorry about the loss of both of your parents in such a short time. Hopefully others reading this hint will keep this in mind. It's amazing how many dead people vote, in every state. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires that every state "make reasonable efforts to remove persons who have died," but there is no set standard for doing this. Each state is different, so take the time to make sure a deceased person's name is no longer on the roll. Notify your voter-registration office yourself, and follow up when you go to vote. - Hugs, Heloise

Voter ID Laws Do Not Suppress the Vote

By Hans von Spakovsky Polls consistently show that Americans -- regardless of race or ethnicity -- agree that requiring identification to vote is a common-sense way to ensure the integrity of our elections. The repeated narrative pushed by critics that this "suppresses" votes is a myth. That claim has been disproven by the turnout results in states such as Georgia and Indiana, whose voter ID laws have been in place for years. In fact, these states experienced almost no problems despite apocalyptic predictions of opponents. The number of Americans who don't already have an ID is minuscule -- and every state with a voter ID law gives a free ID to anyone who can't afford one. Opponents who say there is no voter fraud are wrong. As the Supreme Court noted in 2008 when it upheld Indiana's photo ID law, we have a long, documented history of voter fraud in this country -- and it could make the difference in a close election. That is why states should also be requiring proof-of-citizenship to register to prevent non-citizens from illegally voting.

CBS Evening News Sounds the Alarm Playing the Race Card Against Voter ID Laws

Amidst their voluminous Super Tuesday 3 coverage, the CBS Evening News found just over two minutes to trot out the tired liberal argument that voter ID laws, like the one in North Carolina, have a racist angle. Anchor Scott Pelley set the scene from the start of the segment before correspondent Mark Strassamann took over by making it clear that it would be a left-leaning piece on the issue: "In North Carolina, about 1,000 voters cast provisional ballots because they didn't have enough identification to meet the state's new, strict voter ID law. The law was passed even though voter fraud is almost unknown there. Opponents say the law is meant to silence minority voters."

Voter Fraud in the U.S.: Documented

Refuting the contention that vote fraud is rare, a compilation by Discoverthenetworks.org of thousands of incidences of vote fraud shows why voter photo ID laws are needed now more than ever.

The New Frontiers of Vote Fraud

By Barbara Joanna Lucas Capital Research Center The Left seeks power, and at least for the time being, that requires winning elections. So the Left pursues every scheme it can concoct to boost votes for its favored causes and candidates. This report details how the Left not only opposes every law, like voter ID, that aims to ensure honest elections, it is also passing laws and regulations that aim to swamp the polls with Left-friendly voters. And so non-citizens, and illegal immigrants, and underage voters are being welcomed to voting booths, while voter registration and even voting itself are on the road to being made compulsory for every person with a heartbeat. Where does this notion that anyone with a pulse must vote come from? Why is it that even the most modest measures to ensure an election has integrity provoke hysteria from the Left and shameless comparisons to Jim Crow measures that unconstitutionally denied large numbers of Americans the right to vote? The Left has long used shrill rhetoric to stifle many electoral integrity laws across the country. More recently, it has become increasingly emboldened as it parades illegal voters to the polls. There is a simple explanation: Voter fraud and illegal immigrant votes have historically favored Democrats, as we shall see.

How Democrats Suppress the Vote

By Eitan Hersh (fivethirtyeight.com) In the ongoing fight between Democrats and Republicans over election procedures like voter ID and early voting, the Democrats are supposedly the champions of higher turnout and reducing barriers to participation. But when it comes to scheduling off-cycle elections1 like those taking place today, the Democratic Party is the champion of voter suppression. Indeed, few people will vote today (Nov. 3). Many elections are taking place, but almost all are for local offices. School boards, for example, are up for election in Houston; Fairfax County, Virginia; Charlotte, North Carolina and in hundreds of other communities that oversee the education of millions of schoolchildren. But only a small number of highly engaged voters will participate in the elections for these offices. Scheduling local elections at odd times appears to be a deliberate strategy aimed at keeping turnout low, which gives more influence to groups like teachers unions that have a direct stake in the election's outcome. But before getting into the details of off-cycle elections, consider the parties' basic positions on issues of voter participation. As election law expert Rick Hasen has noted, there is a philosophical divide between the parties. Supposedly, for Republicans, small barriers to participation can help the functioning of a democracy. For instance, in recent years, Republicans have been pushing a requirement that voters present identification when they show up to cast a ballot. They argue that voter ID laws can prevent fraud and foster confidence in the electoral system. But they also argue that if an ID requirement deters people who aren't particularly well-informed or invested in the political process, this might be a net benefit for the electoral system. The Democratic philosophy is different. For Democrats, universal participation is a value: All voices ought to be represented in the electoral sphere, so the government should not put up any unnecessary barriers to participation. Debates over issues like voter ID are politically explosive because each side suspects the other of having a strategic motive, not a philosophical one, for its position. Maybe Republicans want lower turnout not because it yields an informed electorate, but because it favors their side. Maybe Democrats promote higher turnout not because of an ideological commitment to civic engagement, but because higher turnout helps elect Democrats (though there is substantial disagreement on whether that is true). Nowhere are the strategic motivations -- and the hypocritical rhetoric -- of both parties more apparent than in the timing of elections. The election calendar in the United States is an insane mess. Exhibit A is New Jersey. New Jersey holds federal elections with the rest of the country on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of even-numbered years. But elections for state office in New Jersey are held in November of odd-numbered years. School district elections are held on the third Tuesday in April or else in November. And fire district commissioner elections are held on the third Saturday in February. It isn't just New Jersey. Most states -- 44 out of 50 -- hold some state and local elections off the federal cycle. Why? Political scientist Sarah Anzia, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, gives a compelling explanation in an outstanding book published last year. The first point that Anzia makes is that the off-cycle election calendar is not a response to voter preferences; voters do not like taking multiple trips to the voting booth. Anzia asked a nationally representative sample of Americans if they prefer elections held at different times for different offices "because it allows voters to focus on a shorter list of candidates and issues during each election" or all at the same time "because combining the elections boosts voter turnout for local elections." Voters of all political stripes prefer consolidated elections, and by wide margins. But that's especially true for people who identify as Democrats, who prefer consolidated elections 73 percent to 27 percent. Consolidation is popular, and during the decade-long period between 2001 and 2011 that Anzia studied, state legislatures across the country considered over 200 bills aimed at consolidating elections. About half, 102 bills, were focused specifically on moving school board election dates so that they would coincide with other elections. Only 25 became law. The consolidation bills, which were generally sponsored by Republicans, typically failed because of Democratic opposition, according to Anzia. By her account, Democrats opposed the bills at the urging of Democratic-aligned interest groups, namely teachers unions and municipal employee organizations.