We go through this charade every election cycle. In the weeks leading
up to Election Day, Republicans claim that Democrats and their allies
are coordinating to steal the election through massive voter fraud
campaigns. Here in Illinois, Senator-elect Mark Kirk and the Republican
Party dispatched election lawyers to "vulnerable precincts ... where the
other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat." When the
election actually rolls around, those partisan officials surely don't
prevent the theft of votes; widespread voter fraud is insanely complicated to pull off and thus never happens. Indeed, as Demos' Tova Andrea Wang wrote
last Thursday, there was a "sudden silence from the fraud-mongerers and
Tea Party poll watch groups" because they could not find "one case of
substantiated fraud at the polling place." But the media takes the
political stunt seriously, so the GOP wails about the "problem" every
year. In doing so, they diminish the credibility of the electoral system
and lay the groundwork for more sophisticated voter suppression
tactics. More from Wang:
It is well established through academic
research, reports from elections officials and law enforcement
statistics that voter fraud at the polling place is almost
non-existent. The motivation for ginning up this bogeyman is to
encourage activities such as vote caging and challenges designed to
intimidate certain groups of voters and ultimately enact policies such
as proof of citizenship and voter ID laws that will make it harder for
disadvantaged groups to exercise their right to vote. Such efforts must
continue to be combated as weapons of disenfranchisement rather than
fraud fighting.
What's most infuriating about the voter fraud
canard is that our voting system still has legitimate problems. In
Illinois, poll workers throughout the state acknowledged confusion over
who was eligible to file a regular or provisional ballot. The Election
Protection Coalition, for example, received complaints that some
election judges were requiring individuals on a list of "suspended
voters" to cast provisional ballots even though they were entitled to a
regular ballot if they provided required identification. Four years ago, plenty
of Illinois' provisional ballots were rejected for a variety of reasons
ranging from registration list errors, address changes, and a lack of
provisional ballots at polling places. If the GOP was serious about
preserving the franchise, they would have worked with the Attorney General's office to clear up this confusion before November 2. But ensuring that all voters get the chance to cast a ballot isn't really one of their top priorities.
