Title: The Misleading Myth of Voter Fraud in American Elections | Scholars Strategy Network
Headings: The Misleading Myth of Voter Fraud in American Elections
The Misleading Myth of Voter Fraud in American Elections
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Lorraine C. Minnite

Content: Mistakes in a Confusing System are the Real Issue
When voter fraud accusations are tracked down to their specifics, irregularities almost always turn out to be simple mistakes by election officials or voters. In the contested 2004 Washington state gubernatorial election, a Superior Court judge ruled invalid just 25 ballots, constituting 0.0009 percent of the 2,812,675 cast. Many were absentee ballots mailed as double votes or in the names of deceased people, but the judge did not find all were fraudulently cast. When King County prosecutors charged seven defendants, the lawyer for one 83-year old woman said his client “simply did not know what to do with the absentee ballot after her husband of 63 years, Earl, passed away” just before the election, so she signed his name and mailed the ballot. A leaked report from the Milwaukee Police Department found that data entry errors, typographical errors, procedural missteps, misapplication of the rules, and the like accounted for almost all reported problems during the 2004 presidential election. When the South Carolina State Election Commission investigated a list of 207 allegedly fraudulent votes in the 2010 election, it found simple human errors in 95 percent of the cases the state’s highest law enforcement official had reported as fraud. A study by the Northeast Ohio Media Group of 625 reported voting irregularities in Ohio during the 2012 election found that nearly all cases forwarded to county prosecutors were caused by voter confusion or errors by poll workers. The Reforms We Really Need
Voters acting on their own have no rational cause to vote fraudulently. The odds of casting a deciding vote are miniscule and cheaters risk criminal prosecution under state laws on the books for decades. The costs of fraudulent voting are steep and the benefits practically non-existent.