Is there any measurable problem with U.S. voter identity fraud?

Factual Questions
1

The U.S. House of Representatives has just passed a bill which would require photo identification for voting.

Putting aside questions of the political wisdom or value of this measure (which belong in Great Debates), is there any measurable problem with voter identity fraud in the U.S.?

Obviously, there have been isolated instances where an ineligible voter casts a ballot, and in each election there are accusations that problems with individual polling places are symptoms of a general effort to disenfranchise a particular class of voters. But I haven’t heard of any widespread or systematic problems with voter impersonation or non-citizens voting.

So, is there any documented problem that this measure ostensibly seeks to fix?

2

Some say that the mayor of Detroit regularly visits the cemetaries to recruit voters. This practice could at least slow this practice down a bit.

3

[QUOTE=ASAKMOTSD]
Some say that the mayor of Detroit regularly visits the cemetaries to recruit voters. This practice could at least slow this practice down a bit.
[/QUOTE]

He might have done that, but Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s major (alleged) scheme is to make sure that the senile old ladies in the nursing homes vote by absentee ballot. And if they’re too senile to fill out the ballots or know who was running, well Kwame’s people are happy to fill out their ballots for them.

Also, there have always been rumors that the Mafia used the cemetery vote to help JFK get elected.

It might be a real problem, but naturally it’s hard to know just how common it is. It seems to me that when I hear such allegations, the scam usually runs like this: a group of people register to vote in several nearby cities, probably using fake names, and then on election day they make the rounds to all the various precincts.

4

I can’t speak to how rampant it is, and although I tell people outside of Michigan that I’m from Detroit (so they know roughly where I’m from), I’m certainly glad it’s not literally true with Detroit politics (although their water situation does directly impact me).

In the USA, we’re supposedly very federal in our election process. We have exactly zero federal elections, and the US government generally allows the states to do what they want, within the bounds of constitutionality. The requirement of photo ID by some states has been struck down as unconstitutional by (state? federal?) courts (cites?). I wonder if the same would happen in the proposed bill at some point.

Our neighbor to the south is also a federal system, but there’s a stronger federal power there and all elections follow national standards. Your voter ID card is a photo ID without exception. When you go to the polls to vote, the voter logs contain a photostatic copy of your very ID. The volunteers match you up, the parties’ representatives verify that you’re you, and then you’ve given your ballot to do with what you please (hopefully you mark it and deposit it in the box). Despite the publicized antics of the sore loser, it was the cleanest election in Mexico’s history, and voter fraud was greatly reduced. Even so, fraud is still possible, especially in an uncontested area where one or more of the parties’ representatives don’t show up or don’t know where to come. The common trick is to trade a sack of rice, beans, or some other staple for the uninterested person’s voter ID card. This is then matched in the logs, the ballot box is stuffed, and the voter ID makes its way back to the owner. Luckily this is only practical in poor, rural areas without a large population density, thus limiting the importance of such fraud in a country where they use the popular vote to select a winner based on simple plurality. In this last case, though, the margin was so small that this practice could have had a major effect if it were done substantially more. In the USA, I could envision this trick working, but it would be substantially more costly, I imagine, due to the higher standards of what we call “the poor” in our own country.

5

It appears a similar law was just recently ruled unconstitutional in Georgia (story link)

It looks like a similar Arizona law has been allowed to go into effect and a judge refused to block it’s enforcement… (story link)

Personally, I think you should have to show some form of valid ID when you’re voting, and there should be a way to get some ID that would qualify for free.

I think the absentee ballot thing is a valid question, but they should be able to enact some way to prove your ID when you cast the ballot. The trick there would be to make it safe from ID theft…

6

It seems to me that it’s a lot more difficult to cast a large number of phony votes than for a well-placed partisan official to disenfranchise a large number of voters.

IMO, we should err on the side of more people voting.

7

It is so obvious that the purpose is to deprive blacks and other lower class people from voting. I suppose fraud exists, but non-voting is the far worse problem. I am also of the opinion that one of the main purposes of the so-called war on drugs is to permanently disqualify voters (in some states, anyway). My sister used cocaine for many years and was never worried about being apprehended since they never went after middle class white users.

8

This is IMHO, but I’m very much opposed to the line of argument that says a jurisdiction can afford a certain degree of vote fraud simply because there’s no “measurable problem” with it in the sense of affecting the result of the election. How can you campaign for people to make use of their suffrage, telling them that “every vote counts” on one hand, yet argue on the other hand that there’s no problem at all as long as the fraud does not make someone else winner of the election than the guy who would have won if everything had gone the right way? Of course a hundred per cent certainty cannot be achieved. But saying that fraud isn’t a problem at all as long as it stays within given limits is effectivley abridging the value of the single ballot.

9

[QUOTE=Schnitte]
How can you campaign for people to make use of their suffrage, telling them that “every vote counts” on one hand, yet argue on the other hand that there’s no problem at all as long as the fraud does not make someone else winner of the election than the guy who would have won if everything had gone the right way? Of course a hundred per cent certainty cannot be achieved. But saying that fraud isn’t a problem at all as long as it stays within given limits is effectivley abridging the value of the single ballot.
[/QUOTE]

There’s no intrinsic value to a single ballot unless the difference is within a single vote. There’s lots of value in saying that every vote counts so that you can persuade more people to vote if that’s what you want to achieve. You can’t go and tell everyone that their one vote doesn’t count, because we all want to feel special and that we made a difference. If you tell 'em that their one vote doesn’t count, it will make them more disinclined to vote. But the fact is, a single vote doesn’t count – in the literal sense of counting – a wit to the outcome on a large election. That doesn’t mean that voting isn’t important – we need partipation, so the only real value in a single individual’s voting is setting the example so that others will be encouraged to vote.

Of course I’m not saying that voting per se is unimportant. But “the vote” isn’t something composed of individuals. A single individual is to “the vote” as a single cell is to your body.

10

[QUOTE=Hari Seldon]
It is so obvious that the purpose is to deprive blacks and other lower class people from voting.
[/QUOTE]
Not just them – this really eliminates many student voters, too.

Minnesota is easier than most states for voting, you can register right at the polling place on election day. It requires:

  • an official ID (Drivers License, etc.) with your current address, or
  • an official ID (Drivers License, etc.) with a previous address plus a current utility bill for your current address, or
  • a registered voter from that precinct who can vouch that you live there.

Many college students are just getting politically active, and voting, maybe for the first time. But this would prevent many of them from voting.

They are living away from their home address, usually for the first time. Generally, their Drivers License still has their home address (why would they change it? That costs money, and they don’t think of their dorm room as a permanent address anyway). So that won’t work.

Their student ID card may have a photo, but usually not an address (colleges know better; student addresses change too often). So that won’t work.

They could use one of those with a utility bill, but most student housing (dorms or student apartments) has utilities included in the rent, so they would have no utility bill. Cell phone bills won’t work, because they don’t have a fixed location.

So the only way they can vote is the less convenient option of finding an already registered voter in the precinct and arranging to go with them (hard to do when you just moved in a few months ago). And we actually have some precincts that are entirely dorms, with no permanant registered voters at all. So, in practice, this won’t work for many students.

The end result is that these rules eliminate many college student voters. The Federal photo-id requirement would eliminate more of them.
And, of course, most of these eliminated voters are likely to be Democrats, not Republicans.

11

Washington state’s last governor’s race was extraordinarily close. The Republicans brought a suit for a recount, among other things alleging that enough felons had improperly voted to sway the outcome.

12

I think it is safe to say the magnitude of voter identity fraud in the US is not well qualified. I’d imagine fraud would be limited to a small percentage of areas, that if it has been unsuccessful it would be widely reported, and that when successful it is not well advertised.

I don’t see a requirement to have a photo ID to vote as a bad thing, providing the list of acceptable photo IDs is reasonable – most people do have a driver’s license. The criteria used by Minnesota seem fair.

Canada is a country which coasts on its reputation for fairness while often being much less so behind the scenes. Our laws for things for insider trading, etc. are nothing like as stringent as those in the US, and they should be. I was shocked to read in local papers that something like 250,000 people in Toronto registered to vote for the mayor of Toronto were “unable to confirm their citizenship” when asked to do so. These numbers may not be accurate, but 10% is a big chunk of the population.

One vote doesn’t mean much statistically. But the number of recent close horse races is impressive, and even a small percentage of fradulent votes might swing an election, even in the US.

13

[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]

Minnesota is easier than most states for voting, you can register right at the polling place on election day. It requires:

  • an official ID (Drivers License, etc.) with your current address, or
  • an official ID (Drivers License, etc.) with a previous address plus a current utility bill for your current address, or
  • a registered voter from that precinct who can vouch that you live there.

[/QUOTE]

This last option seems to invite fraud. Find a few dishonest people to serve as the one who vouches for people, and start bussing in people from other places to vote and have the dishonest local vouch for them all.

14

It seems to me from the responses so far that nobody has identified an actual voter identity fraud problem beyond “some say” that it occurs in Detroit and that it might be possible to do in some rural areas.

[QUOTE=Dr_Paprika]
I was shocked to read in local papers that something like 250,000 people in Toronto registered to vote for the mayor of Toronto were “unable to confirm their citizenship” when asked to do so. These numbers may not be accurate, but 10% is a big chunk of the population.
[/QUOTE]

I wonder what it means to be “unable to confirm their citizenship.” If you stopped me on the street (or when I was submitting my voter registration form), I would almost certainly be unable to confirm my citizenship because I don’t regularly carry my passport or birth certificate with me. If I really had to, I could dig them out of my files.

My late grandmother was born in upstate New York early last century and had difficulties with the Social Security Administration because she did not get a birth certificate at the time she was born. She had a passport since the 1920’s, but the absence of a birth certificate caused her difficulties with her benefits.

Similarly, I got a notice from the DMV to verify my social security number that my birth date on their records did not match with that on the Social Security Administration records, and if this were not reconciled within a specifice time period, the DMV would suspend my driver’s license. Turns out that the SSA had my incorrect birth date on file, and I had to go downtown with a raft-load of documents to get it corrected. If I didn’t have the necessary documents available, I would have been in a tough Catch-22, because I couldn’t get any identity documents because I didn’t have identity documents. It would have been worse if this impacted my ability to vote.

There are known difficulties with people obtaining valid identification and proof of citizenship, some of which have been discussed here. I guess what I am asking if there are any identifiable countervailing benefits in the actual reduction of fraud with this measure. From a factual, GQ perspective, I haven’t seen anything more than speculation that there could be a problem.

As to the wisdom or political value of this measure, there is a GD thread on the subject.

15

Re: Toronto elections

People were asked by mail to provide any proof of Canadian citizenship – including birth certificate, passport, affadavit from a white-collar guy, SIN, etc. No doubt a percentage of the people could not be bothered to do this for municipal elections, or were citizens but could not find or did not have the desired papers. But it also seems possible a high percentage of this population of previous voters were landed or illegal immigrants (neither uncommon in Toronto) or outright fraudulent (which nobody is really measuring; this is a tougher thing to catch IF the problem is rare and local rather than systemic).

Re: Proof of obtaining citizenship papers

This is well documented, but I think it is likely tougher in the States than Canada. But it’s also not like people were stopped on the street and asked to show proof immediately.

16

[QUOTE=Lips_Obsession]
This last option seems to invite fraud. Find a few dishonest people to serve as the one who vouches for people, and start bussing in people from other places to vote and have the dishonest local vouch for them all.
[/QUOTE]
Well, it hasn’t happened. Most of the reported problems are of people being denied access to vote when they should be able to.

But there would be some practical problems in bussing in people like that.

First, the voucher has to swear an oath that they personally know that this person lives in the precinct, and there are legal penalties for falsely doing this. Though that might not bother a crook.

Second, the bussed-in people have to give their address when registering. So someone would have to find a bunch of different addresses in the precinct to use. (If you used the same one, it would be easily caught.) They have to be real addresses, since that is checked (later). And they send a card to those addresses, with return receipt. So someone would have to live at those addresses, and accept mail in the names of the bussed-in people. Because if the mail comes back, that will start an investigation.

Also, a list is provided to political parties (and anyone who asks) that shows people living at the same address. If you got a bunch of party hacks to each claim one or two of these bussed-in people as living at their address, it would show up on this list, and likely be noticed by someone. Besides, the chances of keeping it secret when that many people know about it are small. One disgruntled party hack could blow the whistle on the whole scheme.

Third, these bussed-in people have to give their Drivers License number or SSN when they registered. That will be checked later, and it will be caught that they voted in 2 different precincts on the same day. (Presumably, if you’re trying to increase your votes, you want them to vote in their original precinct before being bussed-in to another one.) Fake numbers would be caught, because the voter list is checked against the DL & SSN databases.

Doing such a bussed-in-voter scheme on a large enough scale to make a difference seems to have very large practical problems.

17

Mayor Daley delivered enough ghosts to swing Illinois, and that decided the election. JFK was elected fraudulently. :eek:

18

In crooked cities like Boston, the ward bosses maintain the voting lists. When somebody dies, they keep the name listed as active, and that vote is always for the local hack in power. In South Boston, several people who died before 1920, voted for Kennedy in 1960. :smack: