What would you suggest they do to prevent and enforce against the sort of voter fraud we are discussing, the sort that Bannon seems to have committed and apparently with intention to break a law? Or for that matter the sort that the Monkey Cage article concludes, as their “best guess”, may exist enough to be impactful in a few close elections, a sort that they believe is committed more without intent but out ignorance, a result of “lack of awareness about legal barriers”?
Serious suggestions only please.
Note also from the article:
How much effort and how many dollars invested should the state of Florida invest in checking that people like Bannon, who are willing to give explicitly false statements, really do live in the state as their “predominant and principal home”?
If we are to believe the Monkey Cage best guesses then at least non-citizens who register and vote would not do so if they merely had to read and sign the sort of notice that Bannon did.
I do think that when there is awareness that fraud, with clear intent to commit such, has occurred it should be prosecuted to to the full extent that the law allows. I would be more lenient if Bannon (or others) could convincingly plead ignorance and a lack of intent to be fraudulent. I do think that states should be making sure that the legal qualifications to register and to vote and understood when individuals register.
The balance however is as contained in the National Voter Registration Act, that there must not be inordinate barriers that may prevent those entitled to vote from doing so, thus voter eligibility can and should be determined with “minimal information.” (As cited in the Kansas case.)
“Attesting under penalty of perjury that the registrant was a U.S. citizen” and otherwise eligible to vote in the state within which they are registering would, per Monkey Cage, likely do much good to prevent non-citizen voting … but it would not do much to prevent the Bannons.
Look, some people cheat on their taxes and more make honest errors and intend to be legal; I suspect that many who do get away with it. But most do not cheat and the reason they do not cheat is less fear of being caught than it is we know it is a crime.