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“”I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.
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—Joseph Stalin[1] |
Voter fraud is a type of moral panic that is popular in the United States. As genuine cases of it are almost nonexistent, it's almost always a dog whistle term for people of color voting. Actual cases of voter fraud fall into three broad categories: a single person voting multiple times in a single election, an ineligible person voting (e.g., non-citizen or non-resident), or a person casting a ballot in someone else's name without written authorization. The more-broadly defined electoral fraud can also include such things as vote buying, false disenfranchisement, ballot destruction, duplicate counting of ballots (ballot stuffing), or tampering with voting machines.
In functioning democracies, voter fraud is by definition a rare event,[2] usually to the point where it does not affect the outcome of election.[3] On the other hand, the more authoritarian the government, the more likely it is that electoral fraud is part of all elections, e.g.:
Baseless or mostly-baseless allegations of voter fraud in the United States have been used as a proxy for racially-motivated restrictions on voting because of the Reconstruction-era Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution that forbids race-based voting restrictions:[7]:300
“”The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
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Voter fraud allegations as a rationale for racially-biased voting restrictions was used by White nationalist southern Democrats starting in the late 19th century to restrict the voting power of African Americans, and continued as a nationwide Republican Party tactic after Dixiecrats moved en masse into the Republican Party.[7]:300-302
A widespread belief persists of hordes of illegal immigrants and homeless people being bused around from one polling place to another on election day. This claim has been used as an excuse to pass voter ID laws, abolish same-day voter registration, require birth certificates when registering to vote, and conduct frequent purges of the voter rolls. Even if voter fraud actually was a significant problem, few (if any) of these measures would actually be effective in preventing it.
In the US, polling indicates that belief of voter fraud being widespread is highly correlated with belief in Christian nationalism.[8] Christian nationalists such as Paul Weyrich, co-founder of Moral Majority, have also spoken in favor of voter suppression measures in what they call "leverage" to exclude likely demographics that might oppose theocracy.[8][9]
In 1890, Judge J. J. Chrisman went so far as to state during the 1890 Mississippi Convention that implemented Jim Crow-based voting restriction (poll tax and literacy tests) for voting in the state:[10]:16[11]
“”It is no secret that there has not been a full vote and a fair count in Mississippi since 1875 that we have been preserving the ascendancy of the white people by revolutionary methods. In plain words we have been stuffing the ballot boxes, committing perjury, and… carrying the elections by fraud and violence until the whole machinery was about to rot down. No man can be in favor of the election methods which have prevailed… who is not a moral idiot.
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Despite this, Chrisman argued that banning Blacks from voting would be the solution to Whites committing massive voter fraud.[7]:302[12]:139 The date of 1875 is noteworthy because that was when the "Mississippi Plan" was created by White southern Democrats to disenfranchise Black citizens (by the racially-biased poll tax and literacy tests), and led to the period of Jim Crow segregation until the Civil Rights era in the 1960s.[7]:302[13] The Supreme Court even approved such measures as late as 1959 in Williams v. Mississippi.[14]
As the Jim Crow era began coming to an end, Black voters began leaving the Party of Lincoln (GOP) for the Democratic Party making the GOP increasingly White. The GOP struggled to win in cities, and concluded from the results of the 1960 election that a new strategy was needed.[7]:304-305 Thus was born Operation Eagle Eye, which focused on the 1964 election in Arizona, which was based on a scheme led by future Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist[note 1] in the 1962 election in Phoenix.[7]:304 The scheme consisted of:[7]:304
Operation Eagle Eye became a blueprint for future voter suppression strategies.[7]:304-305
Ronald Reagan began a campaign in 1975 against poor and urban people voting, with the implicit idea that they're likely to commit voter fraud,[7]:305[15] later demonizing the poor as 'welfare queens'.
In 1980, Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation went further than Reagan in saying that voter suppression was the key to Republicans winning elections, and opposing what he called "Goo-Goo Syndrome" (good government).[7]:306[16]
In 1981, the national and state GOP revived the 1964 Operation Eagle Eye tactics in New Jersey, with the GOP claiming without evidence that there was a tradition of urban vote fraud. The election sites in minority districts were again patrolled by GOP members and armed off-duty police who harassed poll workers and would-be voters.[7]:306[17]
False claims that there had been voter fraud in St. Louis, Missouri in the 2000 U.S. presidential election were made by a Mark "Thor" Hearne, Bush/Cheney representative, and Missouri Senator Christopher "Kit" Bond. The Board of Elections had erroneously removed 50,000 registered voters, and a court had ordered extended voting hours to remedy the situation after the voters had been restored to the election roll. Hearne and Bond had claimed that the court order represented fraud, Bond used his false allegation to write part of the Help America Vote Act, which allowed individual states to require identification to vote.[7]:306-307 Voter identification is regarded by the the Brennan Center for Justice as a form of vote suppression targeted at minorities.[18]
Indiana became the first state to pass a voter ID law in 2006.[19] This was despite there being no known instance of voter fraud in Indiana.[7]:309 In 2007, Judge Terence T. Evans dissented on the constitutionality of the law in a circuit court ruling, stating, "Let's not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic."[20] Judge Richard A. Posner who had ruled in favor of its constitutionality in the circuit court later said that he regretted writing the majority opinion, stating, that often "judges aren’t given the facts that they need to make a sound decision."[21] When it was appealed again, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion that ruled the law as constitutional later said that it was "a fairly unfortunate decision."[7]:309
Belief that voter fraud occurs in the US is common, particularly among Republicans.[22] Despite this, it has been documented that only 31 credible incidents of voter impersonation occurred out of 1 billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014.[23]
In 2016, Donald Trump fuel was poured onto the fire of the myth of rampant voter fraud in large part due to his bruised ego from winning the Electoral College but losing the popular vote. After he entered the White House, he created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to investigate the "fraud" of how he lost the popular vote.[7]:310 The commission decamped without producing any credible evidence. It's sole product included an outline of preordained conclusions.[24] This could be regarded as a prelude to Trump's allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election in which he lost both the Electoral College and the popular vote.
Modern-day allegations to "panic" about thinly-veiled race-based voter fraud include:
What started out as a joke in some states became an actual conspiracy theory. Claims that dead people were rising from their graves to cast ballots somehow turning in ballots are largely overblown. People sometimes end up casting a ballot in their name, but this most commonly is the result of an internal error and not fraud. Some examples of things that can happen:
People casting ballots in a dead person's name is still possible, but it's incredibly rare. One rather spectacular example of this actually happening was in (where else?) Florida, where the 1997 mayoral election in Miami had so many dead people's votes they actually had to rerun the election.[39][40]
“”The truth is that over all those years Republicans found only isolated incidents of fraud. Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist.
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—Republican lawyer Benjamin L. Ginsberg[41] |
The Republican Party's strategy on elections has increasingly boiled down to "Heads, I won, tails, you lost." Or, "if I won, there was no voter fraud; if you won, there was voter fraud." This undemocratic strategy dates back at least as far as Richard Nixon's defeat by John F. Kennedy in 1960.[42] Starting with the 2020 election, this tactic became weaponized by Trump,[7]:299 who could not accept the idea that a majority of U.S. citizens hated him for good reason. Insurrectionist[43] and Republican Congressman Mo Brooks even made this strategy fairly explicit to The New York Times, claiming that only Democrats commit fraud: "I'm in a Republican primary, and noncitizens don't normally vote in Republican primaries. In a Republican primary or a Democrat primary, the motivation to steal elections is less because the candidates' philosophy-of-government differences are minor."[42][44] In the 2022 midterm elections, at least four other Republican candidates (Ron Johnson, Josh Mandel, David McCormick, and Adam Laxalt) have made similar claims that voter fraud only happens in urban (i.e., primarily Democratic) areas.[45] Despite these Republican claims, Trump's own Attorney General at the time, Bill Barr, knew that the claims were bullshit, but only publicly admitted as much after leaving office.[46]
Before Steve Bannon was a Trump White House adviser in 2017, he made forays into the world of voter fraud, falsely claiming three times on voter forms from 2014-2016 that he was a resident of Florida. Prosecutors concluded, "This investigation revealed evidence that tends to indicate that the Subject did not intend to or actually reside in Miami-Dade County." Prosecutors ultimately declined to prosecute due to antiquated and poorly-drafted Florida laws.[47] In one court hearing on alleged 2020 voter fraud, Judge Linda Parker referred to the 'evidence' presented by Trump's lawyer Sidney Powell as "levels of hearsay" in one instance and as so speculative as to be fantastical in another.[48]
“”I don't want my vote or anyone else's to be disenfranchised. […] Do you realize how inaccurate the voter rolls are, with people just moving around. […] Anytime you move, you'll change your driver's license, but you don't call up and say, hey, by the way I'm re-registering.
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—Mark Meadows (White House Press Secretary under Donald Trump from 2020-21), August 16, 2020[49][50] |
“”We need to make sure that everybody's vote is cast. But we also need to make sure that no one else disenfranchises those by creating a fraud on the voting system.
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—Mark Meadows (August 23, 2020)[49][51] |
Following his resounding defeat in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump began actively circulating allegations that he had actually won the election, and only lost it because of voter fraud. But this was not actually new; Trump has claimed voter fraud even before he became a politician[52] — meaning he won the 2016 U.S. presidential election despite (or because of) voter fraud in his own mind.
Many false claims of voter fraud in 2020 were initially propagated by Russell J. Ramsland Jr. with his company Allied Security Operations Group. Ramsland tried unsuccessfully to push similar false claims in 2018, but no candidate took his bait at that time.[53] In 2020, the false claims were incorporated into failed lawsuits by Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and Trump surrogates Louie Gohmert and Rudy Giuliani.[53] The voting machine companies that were defamed by Powell and Trump's other surrogates, Giuliani, Lou Dobbs, Fox News, and Newsmax have subsequently been sued for defamation to the tune of billions of dollars.[54]
Trump claimed in 2017 that there had been between 3 and 5 million votes cast in the 2016 presidential election by ineligible undocumented immigrants ("illegals" in MAGA parlance)[55] Unsurprisingly, the low end of this range was just over the number of popular votes that Trump lost by (2.9 million). Similarly, Trump's henchman, Giuliani claimed in 2020 that 40,000-250,000 ineligible ballots cast in the 2016 election, as many as 1 in 14 votes cast.[56][57] Despite these very large claims of invalid ballots, House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted that he had no estimate while also claiming that there were unspecified large numbers.[57] I.e., Johnson failed to even PIDOOMA:[57]
“”We all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it’s not been something that is easily provable. We don’t have that number.
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In the real world, there were indeed cases of voter fraud during the 2020 election: less than two dozen individuals across the whole country (less than 1 per 10 million votes cast).[58]
Name | State | Alleged circumstance | Vote cast |
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Ralph Thurman[58] | Pennsylvania | Tried to feebly impersonate his son and cast a second vote | Unknown |
Darrick Kent[59] | Illinois | Falsely claimed Illinois residency | Unknown |
Amy Kent[59] | Illinois | Falsely claimed Illinois residency | Unknown |
Adam P. Butler[59] | Illinois | Falsely claimed he was someone else | Unknown |
Thomas E. Wojciechowski[59] | Illinois | Falsely claimed he was someone else | Unknown |
Colleen A. Kirchoff[59] | Illinois | Falsely claimed she was someone else | Unknown |
Danielle Elaine Dooner[60] | Pennsylvania | Tried to vote for her deceased mother | Republican |
Melissa Ann Fisher[60] | Pennsylvania | Tried to vote for her deceased mother | Democrat |
Manikomal M. Kehler[61] | Maine | Voted once by mail and once on election day | Unknown |
Alyssa Dau[61] | Maine | Voted an absentee ballot in the name of a former college roommate | Unknown |
Christine Daikawa[62] | Wisconsin | Cast a ballot for her deceased partner | Unknown |
Brian Shilling[63] | New Jersey | Forged a signature | Unknown |
Frederick Gattuso, a former Republican mayoral candidate[64] | New Jersey | Voted twice with different names | Presumably Republican |
Steven Solop[65] | New Jersey | Voted in two different districts using his business address for one | Unknown |
Bruce Bartman[66] | Pennsylvania | Voted his mother's ballot though she had been dead since 2008 | Trump |
Paul Parana | New Jersey | Voted his daughter's ballot | |
Mark Meadows (yes, the one with the above quotes)[49] | North Carolina | Registered to vote at a residence where he allegedly never lived (perjury), allegedly voted twice | Republican |
Debra Meadows (wife of Mark)[49][67] | North Carolina | Filed at least two false voter forms (perjury) | Republican |
Barry Morphew[68] | Colorado | Voted his deceased wife's ballot, then was charged with her murder | Trump |
Jay Ketcik[69] | Florida | voted in Florida and Michigan | Republican |
John Rider[69] | Florida | voted in Florida and elsewhere | Republican |
Charles Barnes[70] | Florida | voted in Florida and Connecticut | unknown |
Steve Watkins, former GOP Congressman[71] | Kansas | Falsely claimed his residence was a UPS Store | Republican |
Wendy W. Rosen[72] | Maryland | voted in Maryland and Florida in 2006 and 2010 | Democrat |
Leslie E. McIntosh[73] | Missouri/Kansas | voted in both states | unknown |
Lorraine E. Goodrich[73] | Missouri/Kansas | voted in both states | unknown |
James D. Scherzer[73] | Missouri/Kansas | voted in both states | unknown |
Joan Halstead[74] | Florida | voted twice | Republican |
Kim Phuong Taylor, wife of an Iowa Republican county supervisor[75] | Iowa | convicted of "26 charges of false information in registering and voting, 23 charges of fraudulent voting and three charges of fraudulent registration" | Trump, Republicans |
In several cases, people have voted in two different state primaries in the same year, generally by changing residences. It's not always clear whether this is illegal, since state primaries usually are on different dates.[72]
The moral panic around voter fraud is particularly silly if you consider how badly the proposed kind of voter fraud scales up and how easy it would be to get caught. It would take large numbers of people, access to extensive information about ballots that can be co-opted, a means of generating hundreds of false registrations resistant to examination after the fact, or at the very least, a way of stuffing large numbers of ballots into the count in a way that makes it difficult to tell they all came from the same place. As it happens, there is a form of voter fraud that scales incredibly well and has been used with much success in US elections: voter suppression. Closing polling stations in areas that skew towards your opponents, purging voter registrations in a demonstrably over-eager way, and imposing onerous requirement to vote (in person or via post) are just three ways, and they have the benefit of being legal. The Republican Party has had this kind of voter fraud as part of its arsenal for several electoral cycles.[note 3]
In this context, the real reason for crying wolf about voter fraud becomes apparent: the moral panic helps create support for voter suppression. The spectre of voter fraudOriginal flavour is used as justification for voter fraudNew Coke.
Republicans who allege that Democrats benefit from voter fraud have never answered a simple question: if voter fraud is so easy, why wouldn't Republicans do it just as often as Democrats? Put another way, if Democrats could really get away with busing voters from Massachusetts into New Hampshire, why wouldn't Republicans bus voters from Alabama into Florida and Georgia, from Utah into Nevada and Arizona, or from Indiana into Michigan? If millions of undocumented immigrants are registering and voting in the Southwest, why don't millions of conservatives register under false names and vote twice?