Voter Fraud: I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means
Much ado is being made (again) about the lack of meaningful fraud in yet another red state audit of the 2020 election. More specifically, Texas has found (drumroll please):
Although it has yet to finish investigating the records, the state also included an unverified figure of 509 voter records — about 0.0045% of the 11.3 million votes cast in November 2020 — in which a voter may have cast a vote in Texas and another state or jurisdiction. The state said the work of reviewing those records to eliminate those that were “erroneously matched” because of data issues wouldn’t be completed until January.
The state also highlighted the investigation of 67 votes — about 0.0006% of the votes cast in the 2020 general election — cast by “potentially deceased voters.” This review also has not been completed.
In its report, the secretary of state emphasized that the removal of ineligible or deceased voters from the voter rolls “in and of itself does not indicate that any illegal votes were cast.”
All of which is to say that – again – while fraudulent activity was detected (as it is in every election) – there’s zero evidence that fraud caused Donald J. Trump to loose his job as President of the United States. This follows similar results in Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin; in Michigan the audit preening never got off the ground when state Republican legislators failed to find anything worth auditing.
So as Chris Cillizza noted on CNN today:
The basic point is this: Yes, on occasion dead people cast a vote. And, yes, some people try (and succeed) at casting ballots in two different states. But, there is ZERO evidence that these rule-breakers are doing so in any sort of coordinated way. And, the sheer paucity of people who even attempt voter fraud is so small (as compared to the overall number of ballots cast in a given state or district) as to make the Trumpian obsession with it laughable.
People who delude themselves into believing that humans are rational would thus conclude that Trump and his GOP enablers will now need something other then The Big Lie to grift their supporters, and that the pathway to securing federal elections via the various bills before the Senate would become easier – if there’s no real voter fraud threat, then shoring up voting rights at the federal level would be a shoe in.
Such people are deluded however because — yet again — all these audits bring charts and graphs to bazooka fights. The politicians in the GOP care not one wit about reality in this instance, because for them “voter fraud” is simply a means to “other” their political opponents. Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, Kevin McCarthy and their state level enablers aren’t focused on illegal activity. They are focused completely, fully, and directly on WHO votes and WHOM they vote for, with a single minded mission to remove anyone who won’t vote Republican. They know, and have known for several decades, that Republican political and economic policies are and will be rejected as America becomes more “brown,” and women and underrepresented groups seek and gain more political and economic power. They don’t for one second desire to follow the “Rule of Law” regarding voter fraud unless it serves their naked power grabs, and they are perfectly content to manufacture a crisis around baseless rhetoric if it helps them stay in and consolidate power.
Put another way, when Republicans talk about the election being “stolen” they do so because they regard their opposition as illegitimate, and the voters supporting that opposition as fraudsters.
Which means that Democrats slow rolling of national voting rights bills plays into their hands. After all, people who vote illegitimately (i.e. for the opposition) should be expected to protect voting right for everyone, should they?
You’re trying to tell me that Manchin is Pissed Off for no reason at all? That the 4-5 Senators behind him practicing Irish Democracy are not doing the only thing they can to protest being pushed into irrelevancy?
You should try talking to auditers and actuaries more often. They’re much more resistant to propaganda than you are.
Democrats should not be proud about campaigning against their own policies, such as putting children into cages. That you are proud of such emotional manipulation besmirches your character.
Facts speak for themselves, tears only speak about lies.Report
Indeed they do, and over and over the facts show that the 2020 presidential election was carried out openly, freely and fairly with results that are both legally determined and secure. What fraud there was did not alter the outcome.Report
Once you realize that Democratic wins are, by definition, not legitimate and that only Republican wins are valid it all starts to make sense.
When only your side can win, and they don’t, clearly something nefarious happened.
I note that in the wake of Al Gore in 2000, Democrats accepted a very, very narrow loss. And in 2004, when some Democrats angrily wanted to complain Ohio was rigged – -it was an outright bannable offense on even the most left-wing blogs (Daily Kos, for instance, banned anyone who pushed any ‘rigged election’ lines).
Even some of the issues in past Georgia elections, where post-election audits ran into missing or reset machines and grumbling over someone overseeing their own election, was just that…grumbling. The results were accepted.
Democrats seem to have little tolerance for questioning the outcome of elections. Hating the, sure. Wanting more real security (and not security theater) as well as more accessibility for voters? Sure.Report
“Democrats seem to have little tolerance for questioning the outcome of elections.”
That’s an interesting take.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/03/politics/stacey-abrams-concession-2018-georgia/index.htmlReport
Stacey Abrams, after getting her mandated recount, said ‘You got more votes, you won. And you got more votes by deliberately suppressing the vote, and I will keep pointing that.’
Hillary Clinton said basically the same thing: Trump won the election using help via illegal means such as foreign meddling, but did, in fact, win.
Remember everyone: Democrats pointing out that their opponent _won_, and admitting that they did, but pointing out that they only won because of [thing we as society seriously disapprove of and is is in fact illegal, or should be], is the same thing as Trump making up tons of allegations of voter fraud and claiming his opponents _didn’t_ win.
Wait, no it’s not. You do not seem to understand the difference between disputing the outcome of elections, arguing the results are incorrect vs. complaints about how those elections were conducted or the behavior of people in those elections, while accepting the result.
The _outcome_ of those elections in which Democrats lost was not been called into doubt by those Democrats.
Or to put it another way: There is a difference between Democrats getting a speeding ticket, saying publically ‘This isn’t over yet.’, and then, after two minutes in a front of a judge, told they had to pay, grumbled, and paid it with bad grace, complaining how the speed limit there is too low and it’s a deliberate speed trap for revenue purposes.
Vs. Republicans who tried to take the ticket to court, also got told they had to pay it, yelled some, got laughed out, tried more courts, filed Federal lawsuits, and then attempted to overthrow the US government due to a conspiracy theory that the actual US government dissolved under Woodrow Wilson and does not actually exist anymore.Report
“The _outcome_ of those elections in which Democrats lost was not been called into doubt by those Democrats.”
A quick Google search will show you several recent articles that assert Gore won Florida in 2000.
Stacy Abrams and Hillary Clinton came immediately to mind because they have spent an enormous amount of time “questioning the outcome” of their elections. The later has made a career out of it. You want to parse the way in which they assert their elections were “stolen”? Facebook and the white supremacy were the respective reasons. Have at it. But it all seems to end at the same conclusion. It’s a variation on the same theme – denial.
Partisans can spin the “we’re righteous, it’s the other side is evil” narrative all they (you) want, but it’s nonsense and the rest of us in the middle just roll our eyes.Report
Free Market said that Gore won Florida. Bettors got paid for that, so bookies ran the actual numbers.Report
Unlike Philip, I actually talk to folks who win cases and get punished for finding voter fraud.
That their case before the Supreme Court got thrown out does not mean that the above is not true.Report
And they are increasingly open about themselves as being the faction of revolution and insurrection at war with the entire established order.
They aren’t seeking to modify this policy or that. When you listen to the Trumpists the list of grievances is always incredibly broad and usually beginning with cultural issues.Report
Yep. I’ve said for most of the year – as have you – that all the laws being passed to “secure” the election were solutions in search of a problem. They are at best propaganda, but more perniciously they are designed to dampen election participation by “others.” Because the fraud that has occurred is consistent with prior trends. its not zero, but its so vanishingly small – and of particular forms not addressed by any of the law changes in the last year – as to be easily ignored.Report
So here’s a petulant parochial take.
In the 13-state American West, seven states are controlled by Democrats. All but one of those have installed full vote by mail systems. All of them have automatic voter registration [1]. Of the six Republican-controlled states, one recently installed full vote by mail and has automatic voter registration [2], and two have permanent mail ballot lists used by >75% of voters. The other three Republican-controlled states have a total of four US Representatives. The West, regardless of partisan control in the state legislatures, has moved sharply towards vote by mail. In-person voting is allowed, but often discouraged [3].
When experts rate the state systems for accuracy, security, and ease of use, the top spots are dominated by western vote by mail states. The versions of the bills that closely regulate state voting systems that I have read all clearly make in-person voting the priority, and (IMO) would require those same western states to rebuild expensive precinct-based in-person voting. If I were a Democratic Senator from a western state that has gone vote by mail I would slow roll a bill imposing national standards that seem to require my state to add an inferior parallel expensive system.
[1] I use “automatic” here to mean that when you rub up against state government in some form — DMV, public assistance, etc — you are asked if you want to register to vote. I know that in some discussions that’s not considered automatic — automatic is taken to mean they don’t ask, they simply register you.
[2] It is somewhat amusing to see Sen. Mike Lee of Utah go on Fox and (effectively) badmouth the system his colleagues in the state legislature have installed. I assume he doesn’t use the same talking points when he’s at home.
[3] There are only eight places in the entire state of Hawaii where you can vote in person on election day.Report
I don’t read any of the federal proposals as doing that, especially since the vote by mail systems would seem to meet all the access requirements of the legislation. Plus you will note that only in Oregon have there been Republican calls for “audits of the process.”Report
I read all of them as saying two things: (1) in-person voting must exist and here are the constraints; and (2) vote-by-mail must exist and here are the constraints. The constraints basically boil down to either system must be able to handle all the voters. I would be a whole lot more comfortable if you could show me language that says, “A state with a robust vote by mail system can have a very limited in-person system intended only to handle exceptions, not normal voting.”Report
To me the far bigger threat is GOP politicization of the election certification process via legislature or commission rules. Concerns about fraud are unfounded but in principle there’s nothing wrong with ensuring security of process. It’s something we should all want. What we shouldn’t want is some sort of political override exercised by other branches or administrative officials because the wrong person won.Report
This! I don’t even know if such things are constitutional, but I fear that they are. And once in place, when the inevitable shift happens, Democrats won’t disassemble them because they’ll be just too damn handy to have.Report
There are certainly ways to attack it. I would be concerned about the courts’ willingness to hear the case until after there’s already been an override of an election meaning that its coming in the midst of a political crisis.Report
Yep that’s where a big problem looms, and the federal legislation doesn’t address it directly unless I’ve missed something.Report
Say Texas passes a $10,000 bounty on election officials that denies fraud alleged by any voter. We know the Court lets that kind of thing go.Report
We have the Ds threatening to change legislatural procedure to get their “voting rights” bills passed.
This does not bode well for Manchin returning to the House.Report
I mean he’s a Senator, so that would be weird.
The scare quotes was great. Did you get bored posting BS about COVID?Report
What goes hand in hand with the politicization of the electoral process is the politicization of the legal process.
So we will have lawless party hacks throwing out ballots they don’t like and lawless party hack judges making it all nice and legal because reasons.Report
The CyberNinjas dissolved today rather than respond to an FOIA request for documents about their “forensic audit” of Maricopa County vote counting.. So, yes, sometimes fraud does mean exactly what you thought.Report
well technically as a private company they aren’t bound by FOIS . . . the State Senate is however, and I doubt they will disband to keep these record from going public.Report