I posted Voter Fraud a decade ago, when Wisconsin passed a Voter ID law. That article holds up pretty well today. Sadly, voter suppression efforts have also held up quite well. It’s time for an update, plus some commentary on a discussion I saw.
First, I need to correct an error in my older post, where I referred to the “Constitutional right to vote”. Alas, the Constitution contains no right to vote! While our Founding Fathers did a lot of things pretty well, they didn’t bother to guarantee the vote. It’s a difficult right to guarantee, as it does require some agency on the part of the voter, and voter agency is something you cannot guarantee.
The Founding Fathers could still have done better than they did. They couldn't commit to a right to vote when they wanted more people kept out of the ballot box than allowed inside.
This initial error led successive generations to fix the Constitutional “sorta maybe right to vote” with amendments. But like a roof, patching up a Constitution doesn’t provide a comprehensive fix. You caulk up one spot, and another spot has problems. It gets all caulked up.
First we said you can’t prevent someone’s vote because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Clever people said “Ha! They didn’t say we couldn’t prevent someone from voting because of a poll tax! Poll taxes are the answer.”
The next amendment said you can’t prevent someone from voting “on the basis of sex.” Two steps toward one-person, one-vote, and it only took 150 years.
Next, they gave Washington DC the right to vote for President and Vice President. Now they can vote for Mayor, President, and Vice President, but still can’t vote for the Senate or the House. Kind of a ⅗ compromise.
Only two more to go: you can’t be denied the right to vote because of a “failure to pay any poll tax or other tax,” and, finally, the voting age was set at 18.
The Constitution still does not have an affirmatively stated right to vote. The amendment process just lists a bunch of barriers that are no longer allowed. Any barrier not specified is not explicitly unconstitutional.
Let’s compare this to an explicitly stated right that Americans enjoy: our insufferable right to bear arms. This right is affirmatively stated in the Constitution*. We did not need a list of amendments to fix one leak at a time: “You can’t deny the right to bear arms because of race,” “You can’t deny the right to bear arms because of a poll tax.” Second Amendment lovers need no caulk at all.
Moving on to the discussion I saw, I’ll list some statements from that discussion in bold; commentary follows.
“...nowhere in [the] constitution does it say you have a right to vote [only after] you pay someone.”
Sort of correct. As stated above, an amendment does explicitly prohibit a poll tax. On the other hand, what is a tax? If four strategically placed Supreme Court justices think a tax is different than a fee, fine, or assessment, then you better pay up.
Plus, as long as the tax is not explicitly financial, it isn’t forbidden. A poll tax that extracts extra time or effort or travel or bureaucratic hassle is not forbidden.
“No amount of fraud, even the tiny tiny tiny amount we have now, is worth keeping people from voting.”
Wrong. There is some amount of fraud (or deceit, or fear, or misinformation) that could cause a corrupt outcome. Lots of people vote in Russian elections, and Russia is an authoritarian disaster. It’s helpful to keep that in mind.
The point of any election is to reflect the will of the people. If the margin of victory is 1%, and there is 1.01% fraud that reversed the actual will of the people, then the result is corrupt.
“Isn’t the goal of any election to be honest and above board? … Why would anyone be against common sense measures to protect the election process?”
Why would anyone be against wholesome goodness?
The goal of any election is to reflect the will of the people. Anything that corrupts the will of the people creates a fraudulent result. If you corrupt the will of the people in illegal ways, it’s a legally fraudulent outcome. If you corrupt the will of the people in legal ways, it’s a morally fraudulent outcome. I think that’s also pretty important.
As has been established through research, investigative journalism, judicial review, and the statements of elections boards across the country, there is no meaningful problem with illegal voting in this country. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, sure. Let’s continue to be vigilant. We don’t want those mythical dead voters to rise up. That would be creepy.
What about morally fraudulent outcomes? In Russia, the elections are legal (as judged by the state). Does that make those election outcomes morally correct?
It’s important to remember that Jim Crow was legal right up to when it was not legal. Jim Crow was legal for a long time, but it was never moral.
Is there any evidence of efforts to cause legal but morally fraudulent elections in America? Due to the impact of COVID-19, the 2020 election included expanded access to early voting, off-hours voting, mail-in voting, and absentee voting. The result was that more people voted than ever before--for both parties. There was no additional meaningful illegal voting.
This result implies that many Americans are ready to vote if it is convenient for them to do so. It suggests that barriers to voting are a problem. Those barriers, even if legal, may still result in corrupt outcomes. Where’s the outcry from folks who believe that government gets its power from the people?
The presumption that “common sense measures to protect the election process” are always a good idea is incorrect.
Imagine you’re a retail business and your fraud loss ratio--the money you lose to theft--is about 0.1% per year. That’s $1000 of loss for every million dollars in sales. If your friend Fox McFraud tries to sell you an additional security system that costs $150,000 each year, are you buying? It has lasers and artificial intelligence and can detect an immigrant rapist a mile away. McFraud makes a compelling case. He says “How could you be against common sense measures to protect your profits?!”
Maybe you will buy McFraud’s security system, if you are filled with righteous indignation at the theft of even a penny of your precious profits. But it is a poor business decision.
It’s a poor business decision because the point of the business is to maximize profit, not to maximize your sense of righteousness. That is the mistake made when we enact “common sense measure to protect the election process” that in fact have a negative impact on people’s access to the vote. The goal of an election is not to satisfy your righteous indignation, it is to reflect the will of the people.**
“… If ID’s make people feel the elections are above board, isn’t that a win?”
Feelings, wo-o-o, feelings…
When you put some people's feelings over some other people's actual ability to vote... then sorry dude, but that is the definition selfishness. It’s not right to reduce one group’s actual ability to vote just so that another group can feel better.
“If ID’s give an under represented group(s) free access to government ID’s that allow them to rent cars, access trains and airplanes, enter federal buildings and give them economic opportunities they are not offered, isn’t that a win?”
If there’s some free ID that gives poor or under-represented people all this stuff, I’m all for it! Maybe on election day, they could rent a car to the airport for their flight to a federal building where they don’t have to wait in line four freaking hours to vote.
I’d also support giving poor or under-represented people free potatoes. But unless the definition of ‘potatoes’ is “convenient access to the vote,” then I’m not sure what it is has to do with the topic at hand.
See red herring.
“I want fair and free elections. However, [both parties] are playing the system... [that's] my point.”
Please read How Democracies Die. When we give up on our (small d) democratic ideals because we think the other guy is up to no good, we’ve all lost. Don’t give up on ethical governance.
Similar to the prior point, it also isn’t a real argument for voting restrictions. It sounds like my kids: “Wah wah wah my sister did it to me first.”
“Proof of fraud could be hard if there’s nothing identifying about voters.”
Proof that churches are not all communist cells could be hard if we don’t put undercover agents in all the churches. Proof the local pizza joint isn’t trafficking children could be hard if we don’t torture the truth until they give us the truth.
Vague allusions to the fraud bogeyman are not an argument.
“How is keeping out-of-date voter rolls a sound idea?”
We should have beautiful voter rolls. But what makes a voter roll beautiful?
A voter roll is beautiful if it accurately reflects the American citizens who wish to vote when it is time to vote. Some people think that the worst thing a voter roll can do is “be too long.” I disagree. Try a computer. You’d be amazed at how many names you can cram into those things.
The actual worst thing a voter roll could do is cause a fraudulent outcome. That would not be beautiful.
How could a voter roll cause a fraudulent outcome? Maybe busses of dead people lurching from one polling place to another? As mentioned above, this hasn’t been a problem in recent memory. As mentioned in my prior voter fraud post, it is also a terribly inefficient way to influence an election (in America anyway).
A voter roll could also cause a fraudulent outcome if it prevents citizens from voting when they want to vote. This causes a morally fraudulent outcome, since it’s perfectly legal (in many places) to turn people away if they were not aware they were not registered or not aware their registration was removed. That’s not what it looks like when the power for government comes from the people. It is what it looks like when people who write the rules about voter registration can do what suits their interests.
“What part of vote harvesting sounds ethical or like a great idea?”
I think if you have a retirement community where you know people have mobility issues, and they don’t have their own transportation, and it may be a real challenge for them to get to a particular polling place, then I think it’s a good idea to have someone collect their ballots and get them submitted.
You may protest and say, “That’s what mail-in voting is for.” Perhaps so, and maybe y’all will stop trying to restrict mail-in voting too. But I think in a people-powered country, it’s not outrageous to have more than one way to help ensure people can vote if they want to vote.
Before we move on, go back and read that “retirement community” paragraph, but try it out with “poor community” or “rural community” or “campus community”. It still works.
“They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Wait, sorry! That wasn’t from the discussion I observed; it was from President Trump, providing his keen insight into Republican strategy. He was saying that if Republicans allow everyone convenient access to the vote, it will damage the Republican hold on power. That’s the simple undemocratic motive. Some other Republican leaders have led their constituents to believe there are other motives.
Conservatives have had every opportunity to show that they are up to something more noble; in many of the states that have restricted voting over the last 15 years, Conservatives have had complete control of the legislative process. But nothing more noble materializes, because it is what it looks like, and there's nothing more to see.
They could purge the voter rolls and also expand registration options. They could restrict mail-in voting and also expand in-person voting options. They could pass voter ID and also require some minimum number of polling places per capita.
They only propose the restrictive solutions because that’s what aligns with their motives. It is easy to hear what they are saying, and it is easy to hear what they are not saying.
‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25:40
It’s like that, see? Ultimately, you’ll be judged not by how well you protected the feelings of the privileged people who live where wealthy retirees can take the time to volunteer, so the poll stations are many and the lines are short and people can take a long lunch or flex their hours so they can vote.
You’ll be judged for how well you protected the vote of those who had no flexibility in their work schedule, no one to watch the kids, no car to drive, no spare time to register in advance, and no money to pay someone to represent their interests. Are you comfortable with how you'll be judged?
God bless you either way.
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Notes
*I don’t agree with the currently standing interpretations of the Second Amendment, but nobody cares.
**Suppose that instead of investing that $150,000 in McFraud’s security system, you invested it in logistics that made it easier to buy your product. Your profits would improve. What a concept! And yes, if instead of investing in protection from voter fraud paranoia, we invested to make voting more accessible, our democratic republic would improve. What a concept!
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