86ing the Voter Fraud Panic

Following up on my post regarding the Bush Administration's fraudulent presentation of voter fraud evidence, the New York Times did the legwork on voter fraud prosecutions for the 2006 election.

Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

Let's see...86 convictions, across four years, even assuming they were all in one electoral jurisdiction (unlikely), that gives us....almost no impact on the democratic process!

So am I saying people who do commit voter fraud shouldn't be prosecuted? No. Well, except sometimes yes. Like in this case:

Ms. Prude’s path to jail began after she attended a Democratic rally in Milwaukee featuring the Rev. Al Sharpton in late 2004. Along with hundreds of others, she marched to City Hall and registered to vote. Soon after, she sent in an absentee ballot.

Four years earlier, though, Ms. Prude had been convicted of trying to cash a counterfeit county government check worth $1,254. She was placed on six years’ probation.

Ms. Prude said she believed that she was permitted to vote because she was not in jail or on parole, she testified in court. Told by her probation officer that she could not vote, she said she immediately called City Hall to rescind her vote, a step she was told was not necessary.

“I made a big mistake, like I said, and I truly apologize for it,” Ms. Prude said during her trial in 2005. That vote, though, resulted in a felony conviction and sent her to jail for violating probation.

Careless? Sure. Worthy of criminal prosecution? I don't think so. Greatest threat to democracy ever? Oh please.

Rich Hasen of the Election Law Blog (Loyala-Los Angeles) comments:

Together, these two reports show that despite tremendous efforts by the DOJ and others to ferret out instances of voter fraud taking place at polling places (as opposed to, for example, vote buying occurring with absentee ballots), there is very little evidence at this point. It is now incumbent upon those who still believe a great deal of voter fraud is taking place at the polls to come forward with a plan with sound methodology to show that such fraud is occurring on any kind of scale that would justify efforts such as the new recent onerous voter identification laws that have been put in place by some legislatures. But some who raise the fraud arguments do not appear to have an interest in relying on more than anecdote. The stories show the unfortunate politicization of election administration reform efforts in recent years.

The litany of laws that put ever-higher hurdles to voting is truly staggering (for my source-demanding friends, Publius is citing to NYU's Brennan Center for Justice) is staggering. The laws work to disenfranchise disempowered communities--and that's when the administrators aren't deliberately targeting them for removal from the rolls. They stop some people who can't vote legally, sure, but they disenfranchise many, many more law abiding US citizens whose right to vote is constitutionally protected. This is a travesty. And given the history that I already mentioned, it's a travesty that we have no valid plea of ignorance towards.