Tych2 posted:

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Make the cards free. I've always said that and that in turn makes it fair.

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Because voter fraud is essentially irrational, it is not surprising that no credible evidence suggests a voter fraud epidemic. There is no documented wave or trend of individuals voting multiple times, voting as someone else, or voting despite knowing that they are ineligible. Indeed, evidence from the microscopically scrutinized 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington State actually reveals just the opposite: though voter fraud does happen, it happens approximately 0.0009% of the time. The similarly closely-analyzed 2004 election in Ohio revealed a voter fraud rate of 0.00004%. National Weather Service data shows that Americans are struck and killed by lightning about as often.

Many vivid anecdotes of purported voter fraud have been proven false or do not demonstrate fraud. Although there are a few scattered instances of real voter fraud, many of the vivid anecdotes cited in accounts of voter fraud have been proven false or vastly overstated. In Missouri in 2000, for example, the Secretary of State claimed that 79 voters were registered with addresses at vacant lots, but subsequent investigation revealed that the lots in question actually housed valid and legitimate residences. Similarly, a 1995 investigation into votes allegedly cast in Baltimore by deceased voters and those with disenfranchising felony convictions revealed that the voters in question were both alive and felony-free.

Many of the inaccurate claims result from lists of voters compared to other lists - of deceased individuals, persons with felony convictions, voters in other states, etc. These attempts to match information often yield predictable errors. In Florida in 2000, a list of purged voters later became notorious when it was discovered that the “matching” process captured eligible voters with names similar to - but decidedly different from - the names of persons with felony convictions, sometimes in other states entirely. A 2005 attempt to identify supposed double voters in New Jersey mistakenly accused people with similar names but whose middle names or suffixes were clearly different, such as “J.T. Kearns, Jr.” and “J.T. Kearns, Sr.,” of being the same person. Even when names and birthdates match across lists, that does not mean there was voter fraud. Elementary statistics students are often surprised to learn that it is more likely than not that among just 23 individuals, two will share a birthday. Similar statistics show that for most reasonably common names, it is extremely likely that at least two people with the same name in a state will share the same date of birth. The ostensible “matches” may not represent the same person at all.

Other allegations of fraudulent voting often turn out to be the result of common clerical errors, incomplete information, or faulty assumptions. Most allegations of voter fraud simply evaporate when more rigorous analysis is conducted.

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In Kansas, the secretary of state, Kris Kobach (who also wrote Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law), pushed for an ID law on the basis of a list of 221 reported instances of voter fraud in Kansas since 1997. Even if that were true, it would be an infinitesimal percentage of the votes cast during that period, but it is not true.

When The Wichita Eagle looked into the local cases on the list, the newspaper found that almost all were honest mistakes: a parent trying to vote for a student away at college, or signatures on mail-in ballots that didn’t precisely match those on file. In one case of supposed “fraud,” a confused non-citizen was asked at the motor vehicles bureau whether she wanted to fill out a voter registration form, and did so not realizing she was ineligible to vote.

Some of the desperate Republican attempts to keep college students from voting are almost comical in their transparent partisanship. No college ID card in Wisconsin meets the state’s new stringent requirements (as lawmakers knew full well), so the elections board proposed that colleges add stickers to the cards with expiration dates and signatures. Republican lawmakers protested that the stickers would lead to — yes, voter fraud.

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Groucho48 posted:

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Clearly, you guys have no legitimate counter-argument.

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Sea_of_inK posted:

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If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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In 2007, the Bush administration decided to conduct a study to prove once and that voter fraud is a serious problem. An investigative group combed though years of records all over the country. Sure enough, they eventually found what they were looking for. There turned out actually to be cases of possible voter fraud involving impersonation, which is the sort that Photo IDs are intended to prevent. The total number of possible cases over several years came up with:

Nine. That's nine. Nationwide. Nine. Over several years, and several elections, all over the country. Nine. Did I mention 9?

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It is broke.. Everyone admits and knows it's broke.

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Groucho48 posted:

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But, of course, you will provide no evidence of this because you think you are in the majority, so, who cares if you are right or not.

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Tych2 posted:

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It is broke.. Everyone admits and knows it's broke.

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Sea_of_inK posted:

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Really? Who's that?

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