There's No Such Thing As Voter Fraud

The quadrennial alarmism from Republican circles about the danger of "voter fraud" is something I'm used to. But this time around they are really out-doing themselves. In the debate the other night, John McCain made this ludicrous statement:

"[W]e need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

That is, quite simply, one of the more insanely paranoid things that has ever been said in a presidential debate. The reality is that ACORN and groups like it pose NO THREAT WHATSOEVER to our democracy. As Dahlia Lithwick points out it in a typically insightful column today, there is an entire world of difference between voter registration fraud and voter fraud:

[E]ven if Mr. Mouse is registered to vote, he still needs to show up at his polling place, provide a fake ID, and risk a felony conviction to do so.

Large-scale, coordinated vote stealing doesn't happen. The incentives—unlike the incentives for registration fraud—just aren't there. In an interview this week with Salon, Lorraine Minnite of Barnard College, who has studied vote fraud systematically, noted that "between 2002 to 2005 only one person was found guilty of registration fraud. Twenty others were found guilty of voting while ineligible and five were guilty of voting more than once. That's 26 criminal voters." Twenty-six criminal voters despite the fact that U.S. attorneys, like David Iglesias in New Mexico, were fired for searching high and low for vote-fraud cases to prosecute and coming up empty. . . .

RNC General Counsel Sean Cairncross has said he is unaware of a single improper vote cast because of bad cards submitted in the course of a voter-registration effort. Republican campaign consultant Royal Masset says, "[I]n-person voter fraud is nonexistent. It doesn't happen, and ... makes no sense because who's going to take the risk of going to jail on something so blatant that maybe changes one vote?"

There is no such thing as vote fraud.

Indeed. And you really don't need to look at all the studies and empirical data showing that this doesn't happen, because basic common sense tells you that it can't. One of the fundamental rules of criminality is that the more people it takes to commit a crime, the lower the odds that the crime will ever be attempted. As the number of people gets bigger, the probability of occurence quickly reaches zero.

No individual person has any rational motive to commit voter fraud. It's a felony. And one vote just doesn't matter enough, no matter how strong your political beliefs are, to justify the risk of committing such a felony. The only way fraudulent voting could make a difference is if it was perpetrated on a massive scale. So let's consider what this massive conspiracy would necessarily involve:

1) You would have to submit an enormous number of fraudulent but seemingly legitimate voter registrations. Remember, the state still has to process and accept the registrations before the names get added to voter rolls. Duplicative registrations and ones with names like "Mickey Mouse" aren't going to cut it. The fact that Republicans keep hyping examples like this shows how little thought they've given this. If ACORN was really trying to commit voter fraud, wouldn't they use names that aren't obviously fraudulent?

2) State officials would have to process and approve a very large number of these fraudulent registration applications.

3) On election day, you would have to convince tens of thousands of people (at minimum) to go out and commit felonies. And once convinced, these people would still need to go to the right polling places and present the right credentials. Given how hard it is to convince people to go vote under normal circumstances, this is a pretty tall order.

Some suggest that this willing army of criminals might be recruited from the ranks of illegal aliens or unnaturalized citizens, people who are not eligible to vote. That's nonsense. Illegal aliens live in constant fear of being discovered and deported. Good luck getting an illegal alien to submit a registration form much less actually go to a polling station. And legal residents have very similar fears. Voter fraud is a deportable offense. These folks value their immigration status more than anything in the world and would never risk it in order to cast a vote.

Indeed, for every voter willing to commit voter fraud (a minuscule number), there are scores more who are eligible to vote but don't because of unfounded fears that they will somehow get in trouble. Voter suppression is a far, far bigger problem. Indeed, much of the hysteria about voter fraud is specifically aimed at scaring eligible voters away from the polls or causing eligible voters to be stricken from the voter rolls. That's a much more serious risk to the "fabric of our democracy."