Because of the interest in this topic and the facts that show voter fraud is rare, we are sharing this post by guest author Dr. Margan Zajdowicz, an infectious disease physician and a board member of the League of Women Voters, Pasadena area.
As the November election fast approaches, many are concerned about the possibility of voter fraud. Actually we should call it voting fraud as there are many ways to introduce fraud into the voting process, not all of which involve the voter.
Voting fraud has been around as long as elections have existed. There is always someone who wants to influence the outcome of the election in some nefarious way, usually to gain power. Some of the most notorious examples of voting fraud are related to the infamous Tammany Hall political machine which began in New York City in 1786 and exerted its influence in New York politics all the way into the 1960s. Tammany Hall was so efficient at election fixing that between 1868 and 1871, the votes cast totaled 8 percent more than the entire voting population! In the 1931 New York Assembly race 1,000 fraudulent absentee ballots were cast.
More recently, in August 2020, a New Jersey judge invalidated a special city council election because of alleged voting fraud in the city of Paterson. Four men, one of whom was a sitting City Council member and another a city council member-elect, were charged with criminal conduct for harvesting ballots. The good news is that this criminal activity was detected quickly by the US Postal Service and the entire election was invalidated due to questions about the mail-in ballots.
Voting fraud can come in many forms: voter impersonation, false registration, duplicate voting, fraudulent use of absentee ballots, buying votes, illegal assistance at polls, ineligible voting, altering the voter count, and ballot petition fraud. Ballot petition fraud is among the more common forms, with people signing petitions for ballot initiatives with fraudulent signatures, rather than collecting signatures from people genuinely supportive of the particular ballot initiative.
I looked at data from two different centers that investigate voting fraud. The first, the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan law and public policy institute, is associated with New York University. The second center, the Heritage Foundation, is a conservative public policy think tank based in Washington, DC.
The Brennan Center for Justice has done a meticulous review of the data on voting fraud that can be summed up as follows:
The rate of ineligible people voting is miniscule: 0.0025 percent.
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- From 2000 – 2014, there were 31 cases of impersonation fraud among > 1 billion votes cast.
- In 2016, among 23.5 million votes case, there were 31 instances of suspected non-citizen voting for a rate of 0.0001 percent.
- Oregon is one of 5 states where all citizens vote by mail (VBM). Among 100 million VBM ballots cast since 2000, there were only 12 instances of fraud for a rate of 0.00001 percent.
- From 2000-2012, among all known voting fraud cases, only 491 involved absentee ballots.
The Brennan Center concluded that an American is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud by mail.
The Heritage Foundation maintains a large voter fraud map of the United States where you can click on any state and find recent voter fraud cases. These cases are by individual and criminal conviction or judicial finding. Because I live in California, I focused on my State. I found:
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- Forty-seven total cases from 1993-2020
- Eleven cases involving ballot petition fraud
- Four cases about people ineligible to vote (Three cases were the same person.)
- Five cases involving duplicate voting
- Twenty-four false registrations
- Only one fraudulent use of an absentee ballot
- No cases of altering the vote count
The punishment for voter fraud in the US is severe. The punishment for a non-citizen found to have voted involves imprisonment, $10,000 in fines, and deportation; thus few non-citizens are interested in calling attention to themselves by voting fraudulently. For citizens who engage in voter fraud, this crime is a felony associated with fines and imprisonment for up to 20 years. Consider the case of Crystal Mason, a now 47 year old mother of three who in March of 2018 was sentenced to 5 years in prison for mistakenly submitting a provisional ballot in the November 2016 election in Tarrant County, Texas. Ms. Mason didn’t realize that, because she was in a federally supervised release program after having served a prison sentence for tax fraud, she was not eligible to vote. No one told her she couldn’t vote, her mother urged her to vote, and, after her provisional ballot was cast, it was not counted. Ms. Mason lost her job and was returned to prison. A recent decision by a Texas appeals court upheld her 5 year sentence.
Here are 9 myths about voting — none is true:
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- Voting fraud is widespread.
As I have shown, voting fraud is rare, especially when balanced against the huge numbers of votes cast.
2. Election Day can be delayed.
Again, not true. The President does not have the power to postpone an election. America has never postponed a Presidential election and has voted through other perilous times —War of 1812, the Civil War, the 1918 Pandemic and World War I, and World War II —without difficulty.
3. Large numbers of non-citizens vote.
Every time this allegation has arisen, it has been proven false. As I noted, the punishment for non-citizen voting is severe and is a powerful disincentive, especially the threat of deportation.
4. Voting machine malfunction indicates that the election is rigged.
Machines do malfunction, most often because of the wear and tear associated with the volume of votes cast. There is no evidence of any association between malfunction and a rigged election. Ballot marking machines in Los Angeles County cannot be hacked because they are not connected to any internet source.
5. Election night predictions turning out to be wrong means the election is suspect.
Election night predictions may be wrong because many ballots are counted after Election Day. Often these ballots are VBM ballots or absentee ballots. These ballots may legitimately change the outcome of the election. That doesn’t mean there was anything nefarious.
6. Delay in the results of the election indicates something is not right.
In California the Secretary of State has 38 days after the election to certify an election. VBM ballots must be postmarked by Election Day but have many days to arrive to be counted. In the upcoming November 3, 2020 election in California, ballots may arrive as late as 17 days after the election to allow for slow postal service. All of these measures are designed to make sure that as many people as possible vote successfully and that the results are as accurate as possible. We can anticipate that in the upcoming election, the correct results may not be known for many days.
7. Recounts, audits, and contested elections are ways to steal the election.
Recounts, audits, and contested elections are not a reflection of fraud but rather are ways to assure that the election results are accurate. Huge amounts of effort are expended by election officials in contested elections to assure that the results represent the will of the people.
8. People can’t help other people vote.
Most states allow certain people—family members, healthcare providers, and legal guardians—to assist people in voting. This assistance must be documented on the vote-by-mail ballot. Many states regulate how many ballots an individual may turn in. That number is too small to influence any election. Ballot harvesting is illegal.
9. Purges of voting rolls are needed to eliminate ineligible voters.
Virtually all claims of large numbers of ineligible voters have been found to be false because of incorrect statistical methods used or incorrect definitions of ineligible voters. Most voter rolls allow people to remain a registered voter even if they have not voted in the last two elections in order to not unfairly disenfranchise voters. Aggressive purging of voter rolls results in disenfranchisement, delay and frustration at the polls, and distrust of the voting process.
In summary, there are few data to substantiate a significant problem with voter or voting fraud. The numbers of ballots cast in elections are huge, making it extraordinarily difficult to fraudulently affect an election outcome. Instances of attempted voter fraud are detected quickly and miscreants are punished severely. So in my opinion, the short answer is NO, we should not be staying up nights worrying about fraud associated with voting.