# No Such Thing as Voter Fraud? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 21, 2009, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-such-thing-as-voter-fraud/514613 "2009-10-21T15:44:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-such-thing-as-voter-fraud/514613/141 "2010-04-30T17:51:47Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > I did a little more digging for useful empirical work. [Here](http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/121/may08/ansolabehere_persily.pdf) is a piece published in the Harvard Law Review. The abstract is below: > > It is a law review article so it’s not short, but at least go to page 23 for the conclusions and check out the following tables if you can. Perception of voter fraud and election theft are highly partisan and appear to be completely unrelated to actual voter stringency policies throughout the United States. I’ve read that piece already. Even if accepted, it goes only to the issue of whether fear of voter fraud drives away legitimate voters in dissatisfaction. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-such-thing-as-voter-fraud/514613/142 "2010-04-30T17:57:56Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Excellent post. > > And your supposition with respect to my views on the census is precisely correct. I wouldn’t be opposed to doing it by sampling, but as long as the Constitution says, “Actual enumeration,” then we have to actually count. > > I view our electoral system as a store that in the past year knows about two candy bars and a pair of nylons being stolen, but only because we caught the shoplifters. We have no inventory tracking system and just reorder items when we see empty spaces on the shelves, so we really have no idea how much is actually being stolen. [None dare call it voter suppression and fraud | Freepress.org](http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/983) This is voter fraud. It is not who votes but who counts them. That and how the ability to vote is denied . Your constant harping about voter fraud is just pro-republican propaganda. If you really want to prove your case, cite Beck and Limbaugh. They are 100 percent behind you on this one. The Heritage Foundation will also back you since they are a conservative think tank. But when Bush removed Atty. Generals for not prosecuting voter fraud, you should have learned something. Iglesius said he could not prosecute voter fraud ,because he could not find any. He got fired. There are plenty of studies done by neutral studies that say it is minuscule. Give it up. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-such-thing-as-voter-fraud/514613/143 "2010-04-30T17:58:22Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I’ve read that piece already. > > Even if accepted, it goes only to the issue of whether fear of voter fraud drives away legitimate voters in dissatisfaction. Which all things being equal, speaks to the possible magnitude of voter fraud. If it doesn’t discourage people, a fraudulent vote has a lower likelihood of being pivotal. If fraudsters estimate this, they won’t bother as much because there is some chance they will be caught. So while we don’t have a good nationwide count of the number of fraudsters, perhaps we can at least expect that the magnitude of the fraud would be consistent with basic optimization logic. Of course, voting itself isn’t exactly compatible with basic optimization logic, so I don’t want to overstate my case here. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-such-thing-as-voter-fraud/514613/144 "2010-04-30T18:41:07Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Which all things being equal, speaks to the possible magnitude of voter fraud. If it doesn’t discourage people, a fraudulent vote has a lower likelihood of being pivotal. If fraudsters estimate this, they won’t bother as much because there is some chance they will be caught. So while we don’t have a good nationwide count of the number of fraudsters, perhaps we can at least expect that the magnitude of the fraud would be consistent with basic optimization logic. > > Of course, voting itself isn’t exactly compatible with basic optimization logic, so I don’t want to overstate my case here. The problem is that when it becomes pivotal, it’s too late to fix. Florida, 2000. The reality is that 1,000 extra votes would have made Al Gore president. Might there have been 1,000 right-wing Cubans, non-citizens, casting votes for Bush? Sure there might. But we’ll never know. Normally, when a state’s margin of victory is 60,000 votes, we can safely dismiss these concerns; we know with reasonable surety that there weren’t 60,000 fraudulent votes. But when it happens, rarely to be sure, that the margin is razor thin… THAT is when we will most need to be able to point to solid confidence in each and every vote. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-such-thing-as-voter-fraud/514613/145 "2010-04-30T18:50:53Z")
Does voter \*suppression \*just not worry you at all? :dubious: There’s plenty of evidence for it being a far, far larger problem. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-such-thing-as-voter-fraud/514613.md?page=7)