The Politics Of Voter Fraud
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| Author | : Lorraine C. Minnite |
| Publisher | : Cornell University Press |
| Total Pages | : 309 |
| Release | : 2011-03-15 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 0801457823 |
Allegations that widespread voter fraud is threatening to the integrity of American elections and American democracy itself have intensified since the disputed 2000 presidential election. The claim that elections are being stolen by illegal immigrants and unscrupulous voter registration activists and vote buyers has been used to persuade the public that voter malfeasance is of greater concern than structural inequities in the ways votes are gathered and tallied, justifying ever tighter restrictions on access to the polls. Yet, that claim is a myth. In The Myth of Voter Fraud, Lorraine C. Minnite presents the results of her meticulous search for evidence of voter fraud. She concludes that while voting irregularities produced by the fragmented and complex nature of the electoral process in the United States are common, incidents of deliberate voter fraud are actually quite rare. Based on painstaking research aggregating and sifting through data from a variety of sources, including public records requests to all fifty state governments and the U.S. Justice Department, Minnite contends that voter fraud is in reality a politically constructed myth intended to further complicate the voting process and reduce voter turnout. She refutes several high-profile charges of alleged voter fraud, such as the assertion that eight of the 9/11 hijackers were registered to vote, and makes the question of voter fraud more precise by distinguishing fraud from the manifold ways in which electoral democracy can be distorted. Effectively disentangling misunderstandings and deliberate distortions from reality, The Myth of Voter Fraud provides rigorous empirical evidence for those fighting to make the electoral process more efficient, more equitable, and more democratic.
| Author | : Lorraine Minnite |
| Publisher | : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform |
| Total Pages | : 44 |
| Release | : 2018-01-29 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : 9781984331021 |
- Voter fraud is the "intentional corruption of the electoral process by the voter." This definition covers knowingly and willingly giving false information to establish voter eligibility, and knowingly and willingly voting illegally or participating in a conspiracy to encourage illegal voting by others. All other forms of corruption of the electoral process and corruption committed by elected or election officials, candidates, party organizations, advocacy groups or campaign workers fall under the wider definition of election fraud. - Voter fraud is extremely rare. At the federal level, records show that only 24 people were convicted of or pleaded guilty to illegal voting between 2002 and 2005, an average of eight people a year. The available state-level evidence of voter fraud, culled from interviews, reviews of newspaper coverage and court proceedings, while not definitive, is also negligible. - The lack of evidence of voter fraud is not because of a failure to codify it. It is not as if the states have failed to detail the ways voters could corrupt elections. There are hundreds of examples drawn from state election codes and constitutions that illustrate the precision with which the states have criminalized voter and election fraud. If we use the same standards for judging voter fraud crime rates as we do for other crimes, we must conclude that the lack of evidence of arrests, indictments or convictions for any of the practices defined as voter fraud means very little fraud is being committed. - Most voter fraud allegations turn out to be something other than fraud. A review of news stories over a recent two year period found that reports of voter fraud were most often limited to local races and individual acts and fell into three categories: unsubstantiated or false claims by the loser of a close race, mischief and administrative or voter error. - The more complex are the rules regulating voter registration and voting, the more likely voter mistakes, clerical errors, and the like will be wrongly identified as "fraud." Voters play a limited role in the electoral process. Where they interact with the process they confront an array of rules that can trip them up. In addition, one consequence of expanding voting opportunities, i.e. permissive absentee voting systems, is a corresponding increase in opportunities for casting unintentionally illegal ballots if administrative tracking and auditing systems are flawed. - There is a long history in America of elites using voter fraud allegations to restrict and shape the electorate. In the late nineteenth century when newly freed black Americans were swept into electoral politics, and where blacks were the majority of the electorate, it was the Democrats who were threatened by a loss of power, and it was the Democratic party that erected new rules said to be necessary to respond to alleged fraud by black voters. Today, the success of voter registration drives among minorities and low income people in recent years threatens to expand the base of the Democratic party and tip the balance of power away from the Republicans. Consequently, the use of baseless voter fraud allegations for partisan advantage has become the exclusive domain of Republican party activists
| Author | : John Fund |
| Publisher | : Encounter Books |
| Total Pages | : 251 |
| Release | : 2009-04-28 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 159403270X |
John Fund explores the real divide the country faces with the looming election. Through wary thoughts on voting integrity, he shows how eletions can be decided by the votes of dead people, illegal felon voters, and absentee voters that simply don't exist. If nothing is done to address the growing cynicism about vote counting, rest assured that another close presidential election that descends into bitter partisan wrangling is just around the corner.
| Author | : John Fund |
| Publisher | : Encounter Books |
| Total Pages | : 197 |
| Release | : 2021-11-02 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 1641772093 |
Behind the deeply contentious 2020 election stands a real story of a broken election process. Election fraud that alters election outcomes and dilutes legitimate votes occurs all too often, as is the bungling of election bureaucrats. Our election process is full of vulnerabilities that can be — and are — taken advantage of, raising questions about, and damaging public confidence in, the legitimacy of the outcome of elections. This book explores the reality of the fraud and bureaucratic errors and mistakes that should concern all Americans and offers recommendations and solutions to fix those problems.
| Author | : R. Michael Alvarez |
| Publisher | : Brookings Institution Press |
| Total Pages | : 272 |
| Release | : 2009-11-01 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 0815701608 |
Allegations of fraud have marred recent elections around the world, from Russia and Italy to Mexico and the United States. Such charges raise fundamental questions about the quality of democracy in each country. Yet election fraud and, more broadly, electoral manipulation remain remarkably understudied concepts. There is no consensus on what constitutes election fraud, let alone how to detect and deter it. E lection Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation brings together experts on election law, election administration, and U.S. and comparative politics to address these critical issues. The first part of the book, which opens with an essay by Craig Donsanto of the U.S. Department of Justice, examines the U.S. understanding of election fraud in comparative perspective. In the second part of the book, D. Roderick Kiewiet, Jonathan N. Katz, and other scholars of U.S. elections draw on a wide variety of sources, including survey data, incident reports, and state-collected fraud allegations, to measure the extent and nature of election fraud in the United States. Finally, the third part of the book analyzes techniques for detecting and potentially deterring fraud. These strategies include both statistical analysis, as Walter R. Mebane, Jr. and Peter Ordeshook explain, and the now widespread practice of election monitoring, which Alberto Simpser examines in an intriguing essay.
| Author | : Mikhail Myagkov |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 291 |
| Release | : 2009-04-27 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 052176470X |
A forensics approach to detecting election fraud -- The fingerprints of fraud -- Russia -- Ukraine 2004 -- Ukraine 2006 and 2007 -- The United States.
| Author | : John Fund |
| Publisher | : Encounter Books |
| Total Pages | : 306 |
| Release | : 2012-08-14 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 1594036195 |
The 2012 election will be one of the hardest-fought in U.S. history. It is also likely to be one of the closest, a fact that brings concerns about voter fraud and bureaucratic incompetence in the conduct of elections front and center. If we don't take notice, we could see another debacle like the Bush-Gore Florida recount of 2000 in which courts and lawyers intervened in what should have involved only voters. Who's Counting? will focus attention on many problems of our election system, ranging from voter fraud to a slipshod system of vote counting that noted political scientist Walter Dean Burnham calls “the most careless of the developed world.” In an effort to clean up our election laws, reduce fraud and increase public confidence in the integrity of the voting system, many states ranging from Georgia to Wisconsin have passed laws requiring a photo ID be shown at the polls and curbing the rampant use of absentee ballots, a tool of choice by fraudsters. The response from Obama allies has been to belittle the need for such laws and attack them as akin to the second coming of a racist tide in American life. In the summer of 2011, both Bill Clinton and DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz preposterously claimed that such laws suppressed minority voters and represented a return to the era of Jim Crow. But voter fraud is a well-documented reality in American elections. Just this year, a sheriff and county clerk in West Virginia pleaded guilty to stuffing ballot boxes with fraudulent absentee ballots that changed the outcome of an election. In 2005, a state senate election in Tennessee was overturned because of voter fraud. The margin of victory? 13 votes. In 2008, the Minnesota senate race that provided the 60th vote needed to pass Obamacare was decided by a little over 300 votes. Almost 200 felons have already been convicted of voting illegally in that election and dozens of other prosecutions are still pending. Public confidence in the integrity of elections is at an all-time low. In the Cooperative Congressional Election Study of 2008, 62% of American voters thought that voter fraud was very common or somewhat common. Fear that elections are being stolen erodes the legitimacy of our government. That's why the vast majority of Americans support laws like Kansas's Secure and Fair Elections Act. A 2010 Rasmussen poll showed that 82% of Americans support photo ID laws. While Americans frequently demand observers and best practices in the elections of other countries, we are often blind to the need to scrutinize our own elections. We may pay the consequences in 2012 if a close election leads us into pitched partisan battles and court fights that will dwarf the Bush-Gore recount wars.
| Author | : Tova Andrea Wang |
| Publisher | : Cornell University Press |
| Total Pages | : 217 |
| Release | : 2012-07-27 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 0801466032 |
The Politics of Voter Suppression arrives in time to assess actual practices at the polls this fall and to reengage with debates about voter suppression tactics such as requiring specific forms of identification. Tova Andrea Wang examines the history of how U.S. election reforms have been manipulated for partisan advantage and establishes a new framework for analyzing current laws and policies. The tactics that have been employed to suppress voting in recent elections are not novel, she finds, but rather build upon the strategies used by a variety of actors going back nearly a century and a half. This continuity, along with the shift to a Republican domination of voter suppression efforts for the past fifty years, should inform what we think about reform policy today. Wang argues that activities that suppress voting are almost always illegitimate, while reforms that increase participation are nearly always legitimate. In short, use and abuse of election laws and policies to suppress votes has obvious detrimental impacts on democracy itself. Such activities are also harmful because of their direct impacts on actual election outcomes. Wang regards as beneficial any legal effort to increase the number of Americans involved in the electoral system. This includes efforts that are focused on improving voter turnout among certain populations typically regarded as supporting one party, as long as the methods and means for boosting participation are open to all. Wang identifies and describes a number of specific legitimate and positive reforms that will increase voter turnout.
| Author | : Richard L. Hasen |
| Publisher | : Yale University Press |
| Total Pages | : 202 |
| Release | : 2020-02-04 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 0300252862 |
From the nation’s leading expert, an indispensable analysis of key threats to the integrity of the 2020 American presidential election As the 2020 presidential campaign begins to take shape, there is widespread distrust of the fairness and accuracy of American elections. In this timely and accessible book, Richard L. Hasen uses riveting stories illustrating four factors increasing the mistrust. Voter suppression has escalated as a Republican tool aimed to depress turnout of likely Democratic voters, fueling suspicion. Pockets of incompetence in election administration, often in large cities controlled by Democrats, have created an opening to claims of unfairness. Old-fashioned and new-fangled dirty tricks, including foreign and domestic misinformation campaigns via social media, threaten electoral integrity. Inflammatory rhetoric about “stolen” elections supercharges distrust among hardcore partisans. Taking into account how each of these threats has manifested in recent years—most notably in the 2016 and 2018 elections—Hasen offers concrete steps that need to be taken to restore trust in American elections before the democratic process is completely undermined.
| Author | : Richard Charnin |
| Publisher | : AuthorHouse |
| Total Pages | : 460 |
| Release | : 2010-03-25 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1452006660 |
In 2004, John Kerry appeared to be a clear winner based on the exit polls. But the recorded vote counts deviated sharply from the polls and were too one-sided to attribute to mere chance. The political pundits claimed the polls “behaved badly”, calling the three million Bush margin a “mandate”. They failed to report the impossible late adjustments made to the National, Florida and Ohio exit polls that were necessary to force them to match the recorded vote. Spreadsheet-wielding Internet bloggers analyzed the statistical anomalies. Online election forums were aflame with debates about state and national pre-election and exit polls, Bush approval ratings, margins of error, non-response, past vote recall, correlation between vote swing from 2000 and the exit poll shift, the counter-intuitive Bush gain over his 2000 vote share in urban locations compared to the decline in rural areas (the "Urban Legend"). But the “Smoking Gun” was the Final National Exit Poll, which indicated that there were four million more returning Bush 2000 voters than were alive in 2004. This “phantom voter” anomaly has never been discussed by pundits in the media or political scientists in academia, even though similar anomalies occurred in 1988, 1992 and 2008. The media pundits still claim that the recorded vote is correct (and the exit polls wrong) despite millions of uncounted votes in every election. This book is a comprehensive resource for analyzing presidential elections from 1968 to 2008, including the 2006 midterms. It is written for readers of virtually all backgrounds. The only requirement is an inquisitive, open mind. The True Vote is estimated using basic statistical modeling that is for some reason avoided in the media and academia. Internet links to several election analysis spreadsheet models are provided in the book and are free to download.
