Originally posted by Starlight
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Okay, as Roy has tried to explain to you, there are two very different types of ways of affecting election outcomes.
One is done by a voter trying to be sneaky, and involves voting twice (or more), or voting under an alias. As Trump puts it:
Or as one poster on this site alleged to me "half the cemetery votes", meaning that people come in and vote in the name of dead people (largely an impossibility given people get removed from the electoral role after they die, and a claim that dead people had voted was debunked when they found what had happened was the old people had cast their mail-in ballots early and then themselves died prior to election day).
The Republican idea is that such fraudulent behavior on the part of sneaky voters is so serious and widespread that voters should need to show ID to prove they are who they say they are and can thus only vote once and under their real name (the part where people can get around this by fake IDs is usually ignored).
I agree that if such fraud was rampant, steps would need to be taken. So how rampant is it? Well the Heritage Foundation has a database of every single such instance they can find in the US in the last 40 years and the rate works out to be 1.2 votes per state per election cycle. Since very very few races ever come down to a single vote, it's probably safe to conclude that voter fraud of this type has never affected the outcome of any race in modern US history. A margin of victory of <100 votes is generally considered tiny and pretty rare, and voter fraud wouldn't even affect that sort of race. In any election there are typically several ballots that are ambiguous where it's hard to discern the voter's intention, so in the case where it did indeed come down to one vote, even subjective decisions about a few ambiguous votes could override the fact that some sneaky voter might have changed their hat in their car and voted twice.
And the "solution" the Republicans propose to "solve" this "problem" which doesn't seem to have ever affected any election outcome, is voter ID. But the trouble with that is it just so happens that around 25% of African Americans in inner-cities don't happen to own photo-IDs and thus couldn't vote, and they pretty reliably vote democratic. And while, it would be theoretically possible, if somewhat expensive to go to the trouble of trying to get them all valid photo-IDs (assuming Republicans didn't close all such issuing centers in black areas, as they are want to do), there will always be some, because there always are, who don't bother, because it's too much effort, because they're too busy working or haven't got the time or the money, or can't easily get transport to the issuing place, or because they're sick etc. And so, even if your effort to get everyone ID is excellent, and well-funded, etc, there will always be some who don't end up getting them and who don't vote as a result of not getting one. Could be only a few thousand people, could be a million people nationwide. And so, your "solution" to literally 1 bad vote per state, ends up preventing literally thousands of people per state who have a valid right to vote from casting their votes. Disenfranchising a thousand to stop one, is not a solution, it's a problem.
So voter fraud isn't a problem, and voter ID isn't a solution.
But there's a totally different type of election fraud, called Electoral Fraud. And this is when election officials involved in conducting the election itself take actions that can affect large numbers of votes. e.g. "My vote counting machine just happened to creatively count the votes, how sad, never mind". Or "what giant pile of ballots I had? That fire over there? That's just for roasting marshmallows." Or "look at this giant pile of ballots I found, all Totally Legit, just please don't check that all the signatures are identical".
Because the number of votes that typically need to be changed to affect the outcome of an election is typically pretty large (typically in the tens of thousands), actually changing the outcome of an election involves changing a very large number of votes, and thus typically requires systematic effort by a group involved in conducting the election because only they have access to the votes in such large quantities. Voter Fraud where an old lady who votes a second time because she forgot she voted the first time contributes only one vote different to the outcome (assuming she's not caught, which she usually is) and thus has virtually zero effect because one vote is such a tiny amount. But Election Fraud, where the election officials have large-scale access to ballots and counts, allows them to change the numbers by the thousands or hundreds of thousands necessary to secure a different outcome.
This is why electronic voting in particular is so dangerous because it allows Electoral Fraud on a grand, grand scale. Whoever has programmed (or, potentially, hacked) the electronic voting machines can make the final count say whatever they feel like. They essentially have access to all the ballots.
...and that, in a nutshell is why Voter Fraud where a nasty voter tries to scam the system by voting twice and wearing a disguise, isn't interesting or relevant, why voter ID is a stupid "solution" to prevent it because it itself is a bigger problem than what it solves, and why Electoral Fraud by the officials conducting the elections and/or voting machine manufacturers and/or hackers into those machines are the actual threat to the integrity of elections. And that is why the Republican party's tendency to purge voter rolls in order to prevent thousands of people voting (i.e. pretty much electoral fraud on the Republican's part IMO), while they yell "look over there instead! There might be some voter somewhere casting one extra vote!" (voter fraud) is so galling to me. They commit the big crime to steal the election while trying to distract with claims that someone somewhere might be committing a tiny crime that won't matter.
One is done by a voter trying to be sneaky, and involves voting twice (or more), or voting under an alias. As Trump puts it:
Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again.
Or as one poster on this site alleged to me "half the cemetery votes", meaning that people come in and vote in the name of dead people (largely an impossibility given people get removed from the electoral role after they die, and a claim that dead people had voted was debunked when they found what had happened was the old people had cast their mail-in ballots early and then themselves died prior to election day).
The Republican idea is that such fraudulent behavior on the part of sneaky voters is so serious and widespread that voters should need to show ID to prove they are who they say they are and can thus only vote once and under their real name (the part where people can get around this by fake IDs is usually ignored).
I agree that if such fraud was rampant, steps would need to be taken. So how rampant is it? Well the Heritage Foundation has a database of every single such instance they can find in the US in the last 40 years and the rate works out to be 1.2 votes per state per election cycle. Since very very few races ever come down to a single vote, it's probably safe to conclude that voter fraud of this type has never affected the outcome of any race in modern US history. A margin of victory of <100 votes is generally considered tiny and pretty rare, and voter fraud wouldn't even affect that sort of race. In any election there are typically several ballots that are ambiguous where it's hard to discern the voter's intention, so in the case where it did indeed come down to one vote, even subjective decisions about a few ambiguous votes could override the fact that some sneaky voter might have changed their hat in their car and voted twice.
And the "solution" the Republicans propose to "solve" this "problem" which doesn't seem to have ever affected any election outcome, is voter ID. But the trouble with that is it just so happens that around 25% of African Americans in inner-cities don't happen to own photo-IDs and thus couldn't vote, and they pretty reliably vote democratic. And while, it would be theoretically possible, if somewhat expensive to go to the trouble of trying to get them all valid photo-IDs (assuming Republicans didn't close all such issuing centers in black areas, as they are want to do), there will always be some, because there always are, who don't bother, because it's too much effort, because they're too busy working or haven't got the time or the money, or can't easily get transport to the issuing place, or because they're sick etc. And so, even if your effort to get everyone ID is excellent, and well-funded, etc, there will always be some who don't end up getting them and who don't vote as a result of not getting one. Could be only a few thousand people, could be a million people nationwide. And so, your "solution" to literally 1 bad vote per state, ends up preventing literally thousands of people per state who have a valid right to vote from casting their votes. Disenfranchising a thousand to stop one, is not a solution, it's a problem.
So voter fraud isn't a problem, and voter ID isn't a solution.
But there's a totally different type of election fraud, called Electoral Fraud. And this is when election officials involved in conducting the election itself take actions that can affect large numbers of votes. e.g. "My vote counting machine just happened to creatively count the votes, how sad, never mind". Or "what giant pile of ballots I had? That fire over there? That's just for roasting marshmallows." Or "look at this giant pile of ballots I found, all Totally Legit, just please don't check that all the signatures are identical".
Because the number of votes that typically need to be changed to affect the outcome of an election is typically pretty large (typically in the tens of thousands), actually changing the outcome of an election involves changing a very large number of votes, and thus typically requires systematic effort by a group involved in conducting the election because only they have access to the votes in such large quantities. Voter Fraud where an old lady who votes a second time because she forgot she voted the first time contributes only one vote different to the outcome (assuming she's not caught, which she usually is) and thus has virtually zero effect because one vote is such a tiny amount. But Election Fraud, where the election officials have large-scale access to ballots and counts, allows them to change the numbers by the thousands or hundreds of thousands necessary to secure a different outcome.
This is why electronic voting in particular is so dangerous because it allows Electoral Fraud on a grand, grand scale. Whoever has programmed (or, potentially, hacked) the electronic voting machines can make the final count say whatever they feel like. They essentially have access to all the ballots.
...and that, in a nutshell is why Voter Fraud where a nasty voter tries to scam the system by voting twice and wearing a disguise, isn't interesting or relevant, why voter ID is a stupid "solution" to prevent it because it itself is a bigger problem than what it solves, and why Electoral Fraud by the officials conducting the elections and/or voting machine manufacturers and/or hackers into those machines are the actual threat to the integrity of elections. And that is why the Republican party's tendency to purge voter rolls in order to prevent thousands of people voting (i.e. pretty much electoral fraud on the Republican's part IMO), while they yell "look over there instead! There might be some voter somewhere casting one extra vote!" (voter fraud) is so galling to me. They commit the big crime to steal the election while trying to distract with claims that someone somewhere might be committing a tiny crime that won't matter.
Star, most of the voter fraud we have been complaining about over the years could probably be better categorized as "election fraud" - such as someone signing up dead people to vote, or someone submitting faked ballots, or messing with the ballot boxes. Such as what just happened in Florida. Yet everytime we bring up such issues, we are told it is insignificant or it's just made up.
So this hair splitting of voter fraud vs election fraud is just a way to nitpick the topic so that you can accept fraud in this instance while still denying it at any other time by categorizing it differently.
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