Voter fraud

Voter fraud is a moral panic weirdly popular in the United States. As genuine cases of voter fraud are almost non-existent, it is almost always a dog whistle term for people of color voting.

We must have tamper-proof biometric ID cards, otherwise illegal aliens and felons will intimidate your pure bodily fluids white daughters at the polling station!
Now why would these billboards have appeared in black neighborhoods of Cincinnati but not the white neighborhoods? Hmm.
It's a
Crime
Articles on illegal behaviour
v - t - e
“”The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
—Joseph Stalin[1]

A widespread belief persists of hordes of illegal immigrants and homeless people being bused around from polling place to polling place 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 were a significant problem, few if any of these measures would actually be effective in preventing it.

Seriously

Other allegations to "panic" about include:

  • ACORN — despite any evidence sorely lacking, the "ACORN engaged in voter fraud" allegation has been repeated so many times that people now make an automatic mental connection between ACORN and voter fraud. (For one example, Ballotpedia, a supposedly neutral wiki about elections and candidates which is actually funded with Koch Industries money, has an entire section devoted to "voter fraud" with the infobox previously illustrated with the ACORN logo.) What those making these allegations really don't like is that ACORN was registering black people to vote.
  • "Felons voting" — felons can legally vote in most states, and in most of them restoration of voting rights is automatic upon completion of their sentence. There are still a few lone holdouts still imposing lifelong voting bans on some or all felons or requiring a cumbersome petition instead of making restoration automatic. The trend in the last two decades has been to repeal those disenfranchisement laws. What those raising this claim really don't like is that black people are voting.
  • Intimidation of voters at the polls by the New Black Panther Party. This stems from one lone incident in Philadelphia, which has been mentioned so many times in the reactionary media, way out of proportion to its actual newsworthiness, that people believe it is widespread.
  • Illegal immigration in general. The "illegal immigrants voting" claim has been used by the John Tanton network of immigration-restriction groups as a pretext to support voter ID laws, as part of their broader agenda of promoting tamper proof ID cards through the REAL ID Act and eventually a national ID card, which they view as key to stopping illegal immigration. One of the first of the current rash of voter ID laws (Arizona Proposition 200 in 2004) was promoted almost entirely as an anti-illegal immigration measure.

Dead man's vote

What started out as a joke in some states became an actual conspiracy theory. Claims that dead people are rising from their graves to cast ballots somehow turning ballots in are largely overblown. People sometimes end up casting a ballot in their name, but this most commonly is the result of an internal error, not fraud. Some examples of things that can happen:

  • A person is somehow, in fact, still alive. This claim they're dead usually stems from the fact that their date of birth on the registry is very old.[2]
  • When converting from paper to computer ballot counting, people who lacked a date of birth on their form were given a placeholder in some states.[3]
  • Someone has the same name as a dead person, usually someone who shares the same name as their deceased parent.[4][5]
  • Signatures on a roster may end up going into other rows, causing a computer to mistakenly think that the marks in the other rows are the signatures of other people.[6]
  • Very rarely, a person may legally cast an absentee ballot, but dies before the votes are counted. In these cases, seventeen states will not count the ballot, the rest will.[7]

People casting ballots in a dead person's name is still possible; however, it is incredibly rare.

An unanswered question

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?

gollark: Sure.
gollark: Your estimates are wrong.
gollark: ... `kit` is not a valid domain.
gollark: LyricLy is misinformed.
gollark: 2026, actually.

See also

References
  1. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
  2. Goodman, Jack, et al. “US Election 2020: The 'Dead Voters' in Michigan Who Are Still Alive.” BBC News, BBC, 14 Nov. 2020, www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54874120. Retrieved 17 Nov. 2020
  3. Lajka, Arijeta. “Election Breathes New Life into False 'Dead Voter' Claims.” AP NEWS, Associated Press, 10 Nov. 2020, apnews.com/article/ap-fact-check-election-dead-voter-claims-fc7ba254fd37059f63ea764c18c2a4cb. Retrieved 17 Nov. 2020
  4. BBC Reality Check Team “US Election 2020: Five Viral Vote Claims Fact-Checked.” BBC News, BBC, 9 Nov. 2020, www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54811410. Retrieved 17 Nov. 2020
  5. Toropin, Konstantin, et al. “Claims That Dead People Voted Went Viral. These Are the Facts.” CNN Business, 8 Nov. 2020, www.kmov.com/news/claims-that-dead-people-voted-went-viral-these-are-the-facts/article_b1ae3051-9c49-530d-bbfd-9efd193ce31d.html. Retrieved 17 Nov. 2020
  6. [www.euronews.com/2020/11/12/debunked-dead-voters-ballots-not-evidence-of-widespread-us-election-fraud Holroyd, Matthew. “Debunked: Dead Voters' Ballots Not Evidence of Major Election Fraud.” Euronews, 12 Nov. 2020, www.euronews.com/2020/11/12/debunked-dead-voters-ballots-not-evidence-of-widespread-us-election-fraud. Retrieved 17 Nov. 2020]
  7. Associated Press. “‘Some States Count Ballots If Voter Dies before Election Day.’” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 20 Oct. 2020, www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/some-states-count-ballots-if-voter-dies-election-day-n1243975. Retrieved 17 Nov. 2020
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