Even if all these assumptions are true, that doesn’t mean that it virtually never happens. That means that the vast majority of people wouldn’t do it (at least without blabbing - more below on that). But in a really really close race (I’ve suggested Franken/Coleman) you might get enough people who are exceptions to the rule that they could swing the race.
But I also think your assumptions are somewhat shaky to begin with. You’re asserting that the benefit is nil, but that’s not true. A lot of people think voting is a big deal even though they don’t get anything tangible out of it. And conversely, the fact that no one has ever heard of anyone ever being prosecuted for it would make people tend to discount the risks of getting caught.
This is in addition to people who might not even be aware of their being ineligible to vote for whatever reason.
People brag about holding up liquor stores and the like because it shows their pals what kind of badass tough guys they are. Voting illegally doesn’t have that type of cache.
There could be any number of people casually telling other people that they’ve voted illegally. Why do you assume you would know about it if they do this? As things are now, that’s just not treated as a big deal. As above, someone I know told me that he voted illegally, and if I didn’t happen to be participating in this thread you wouldn’t know about it. There could be any number of other people who did the same without it coming to your attention.
Do you know what sort of steps the voter registration office goes through to complete the verification? Does it vary by state (or county?)? Perhaps a more telling figure: what % of voter registration requests get rejected?
I do agree that absentee voting is much more prone to the possibility of fraud, than in person voter impersonation. (Although interestingly Republicans have made no effort to try to correct this form of fraud, primarily because correcting it would be more likely to inconvenience elderly voters, than it would disenfranchise minorities). But I see no reason why that would be more frequent among those who hate Trump than among those who hate Clinton, and they are very unlikely to amount to “millions” of votes.
Often people get social prestige out of it. That’s kind of the point of the “I voted” stickers. People love to brag about having voted.
Also, they get the warm fuzzies from doing their citizen duty.
Sure, some people may get the warm fuzzies from voter fraud. But see below–if they do, that kind of contradicts your “no cachet” argument below.
Conversely, the fact that Republicans have been desperately searching for fraudulent voters for over a decade might make people artificially inflate the risk of getting caught.
Voting illegally has no cachet at all, perhaps–except amongst the crowd that brags about writing “Fuck Corporate Amerikkka” on a bank sign, like someone did to me years ago, or amongst the crowd that thinks keying their neighbor’s car is awesome. There’s definitely a set of people that thinks any violation of law is a strike against The Man.
I think people would know about it because there’s a massive, massive impetus for conservative politicians to find these people. Imagine I was the sort of dumbshit who would vote illegally and then brag about it: “Come on, fellow anarchists,” I’d write on Facebook, “It’s easy! Register in two different precincts, vote in both. Let’s get some more socialists elected!” My friend–your nephew–posts on my feed, “Dude, don’t be an idiot, you’re gonna get yourself in trouble.” Facebook’s algorithm helpfully tells you your nephew just posted; you idly click over, see my boast, screencap it, report it gleefully to Fox News and your local Republican party HQ.
Or you overhear me bragging to friends about it at the next table over at Denny’s, and you record our conversation, report it to Fox and HQ.
Or you’re a poll observer, you see me come in snickering, overhear me telling my buddy, “This is the third time I’ve voted today, I’m also registered at two other places!” on my way out the door, so you snap a picture and send it to whoever’s coordinating your poll-watching.
Or any number of other scenarios where you’d find out, because people who’d risk prison time for such a trifling crime are not going to be criminal masterminds.
Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, of course, but at some point, if you’ve searched a field for blueberries long enough and haven’t found any blueberries, you start to wonder whether there just aren’t any blueberries growing in this particular meadow.
My dad used to say that those who mistrust the most should be trusted the least. Since all the accusations of voter fraud are coming from Republicans how likely is it that any voter fraud in this election was aimed at assuring a trump victory?
Every state has some procedure to clean up their registration lists. (See here for examples.) Checking voter registration lists against Social Security death records and/or death certificates filed with the local vital statistics office are commonly part of that process. Mom and Dad will eventually get removed from the list; the questions mostly concern how frequently the lists are cleaned and how closely the cleaners check to make sure the name on the death record and the name on the voter roll belong to the same person. (No fair disenfranchising Junior when Senior dies, for example.)
Here’s a different scenario: three ballots arrive at the house where our fraudster and his parents still live. Mom and Dad both have advanced Alzheimer’s and are too far gone even to realize there’s an election on, but our merry fraudster decides they were lifelong Republicans both, and would be appalled that Hillary wasn’t already in jail, so they “would have” voted for Trump if they could. Therefore, he can justify in his mind filling out Mom and Dad’s ballots and sending them in too, a little white lie to stop a great evil.
Are you sure and certain that’s never happened either? How would you propose to prevent it?
Not really. Over 100 million people vote. You don’t brag about doing something if over 100 million other people did it. Robbing liquor stores is something else. Only bad MFs do that, so if you can do that you brag about it.
The laws and processes in place are such that you can’t find it even if you look for it. (In addition to the political realities. A lot of places where voter fraud might take place are controlled by Democrats, and a lot of people who might be inclined to investigate are afraid of “racist” blowback.) Certainly not on a broad scale. And finding one guy somewhere wouldn’t prove anything anyway.
You seem to be assuming that anyone who is aware of one guy voting illegally can run to Republican Party HQ and Fox and they’ll instantly make a huge deal about it. I think that’s extremely unlikely.
This sounds pretty ghoulish, unless your syntax is a bit off.
Did you read the linked article? SCOTUS ruled 7-2 that a state cannot ask for proof of citizenship and the federal form would need to be changed.
Also read what I quoted.
Again: people already brag about voting. There are stickers to help. Facebook added a feature to help. People love to brag about voting.
It wouldn’t prove anything–but are you seriously suggesting that Fox News wouldn’t jump all over that?
If an area is so completely controlled by Democrats that they wouldn’t bother to investigate, that makes illegally voting for Democrats extra stupid, like breaking into a bank to steal everything out of your savings account.
With evidence? Why on earth do you think it’s unlikely? Look at the tremendous hay they made out of the complete non-issue of ACORN (ACORN turned in a couple of employees who lazily registered fictitious people to make it look like they were doing their jobs; Republicans turned that into MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD CONSPIRACY). If they had a smoking gun, Brit Hume would do the Snoopy Dance.
C’mon, everyone knows Norman Bates is a Republican.
We could make a grand deal. A program to ensure that as many citizens as possible are supplied proactively with picture IDs. Post compact registering stations all over the place, a gadget for taking picture digitally, storing on a database with name and citizen status. Hell, you could have a card embossing machine right on the spot! Or mail it, if the citizen prefers.
Free, of course. In other words, take all the steps necessary to be fer sure fer sure that there is no possibility of racial, economic, or ethnic discrimination!
Bonus: your picture is on file, you can show up and give your name or SS# so even if you lost your card your picture id exists in digital form in the clod! And if a citizen of one of the brown persuasions gets braced by La Migra, whip out the card and they doff their hat and say “Thanks for your cooperation, citizen!” and bugger off.
And registering all those new voters, which the Pubbies will just purely love, seeing as how they are all about voting, and stuff. Because its totally about being *sure *who’s voting, which is what they really and truly want!
Boy, that would totally shut up those liberal whiners, wouldn’t it! If they go the extra mile to be certain about it, then we’d have nothing to bitch about! That would sure teach us a lesson, tossing us into that briar patch!
Note that this didn’t even identify noncitizens who cast votes: only ones who registered. The number who cast votes is necessarily smaller than the ones who registered.
Nobody I know brags about voting. The type of people you’re referring to are probably the type who post every mundane detail of their lives on social media.
Yes. I’m surprised that anyone could think otherwise.
This is a special report from Fox News. In a shocking election development, a guy overheard someone at Denny’s saying he voted illegally. Legal and political experts to discuss the implications, plus a live report from Denny’s after the break.
I don’t think so.
Big city districts controlled by Democrats, but in statewide competitive elections.
ACORN was about systemic fraud by a liberal activist group. That’s not the same thing as allegations of individual instances of fraud.
Nobody you know does. Do you deny that there are multiple systems invented specifically to aid in such bragging? Do you deny that lots of people use them?
Are you missing the part where I said, “with evidence”?
No. ACORN was not about systemic fraud by a liberal activist group. It was about systematic fraud against a liberal activist group by a conservative activist group. The tragedy is that the liars at Project Veritas triumphed so completely that, even though their lies were revealed as such and no investigation ever found any systematic fraud (indeed, nothing more than what I mentioned earlier, a couple of lazy-ass low-level employees who committed fraud in order to get out of working, fraud that never affected an election), their false version of events is what people remember.
Conversely, it would appear that these efforts only involved legal immigrants. (Though FWIW I think illegal immigrants are a lot less likely than legal immigrants to be involved in voter fraud. IME, they tend to be very nervous about interacting with the system, although this seems be fading a lot of late.)
We’re not discussing what you think is the true story about ACORN. Or even what I think is the true story about ACORN.
You’re trying to prove from the ACORN story that Fox would jump all over a story of some individual instance of voter fraud. I’m pointing out that you can’t prove this, because the ACORN story, as presented by Fox, involved something much more significant than that. Whether Fox was right or wrong about that is irrelevant.
