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Fraud and rumors of fraud
Mar. 17th, 2007 12:50 amPeople all over the political blogosphere have been noticing the story behind the story of the US Attorney firings that have gotten Alberto Gonzales in so much trouble: the stated rationale for some of the firings is that the attorneys didn't pursue voter fraud diligently enough.
Like Josh Marshall, I've talked about this before. What makes it at least initially hard to impute bad motives is that there are competing Democratic and Republican narratives of election fraud, both suspiciously coincident with partisan interest. Democrats, generally, believe that not enough poor, oppressed, black or Native American people can vote, and that people are being illegally excluded or discouraged from voting; and, what do you know, high turnout tends to favor Democrats. Republicans, generally, believe that too many dumb, evil, ignorant or otherwise unqualified people get to vote, and that lots of ineligible people are fraudulently voting; by extraordinary coincidence, low turnout tends to favor Republicans. Many Republicans may well sincerely believe that it's OK to preferentially go after Democratic election fraud because it's the Democratic election fraud that is real.
So should we take the even-handed, wise-Broderian-pundit view and label it all just a bunch of trumped-up partisan charges, with neither narrative true or both true in roughly equal amounts? I don't think so; maybe it's just my own predictable partisan bias talking, but I find the Democratic narrative much more convincing. The Loeb article links to this 2003 study from the liberal think-tank Demos that I think I've mentioned before, looking at major cases of rumored voter fraud in the preceding several years, and finding most of the rumors vastly exaggerated or without merit; whereas such things as voter intimidation in minority city neighborhoods, phone jamming of get-out-the-vote efforts, and the exclusion of people falsely labeled convicted felons (who I think ought to be able to vote anyway) are quite real. Indeed, the tales of voter fraud themselves provide the stated motivation behind the intimidation campaigns; the intimidators can say that they're just making sure.
I do have to concede one small point--the most egregious case of real voter fraud the Demos study mentions happened to be a Miami mayoral election in 1997 and got lots of local media attention in Florida, probably contributing to the atmosphere that produced such things as the ChoicePoint felon list. But there's still no excuse for it.
Like Josh Marshall, I've talked about this before. What makes it at least initially hard to impute bad motives is that there are competing Democratic and Republican narratives of election fraud, both suspiciously coincident with partisan interest. Democrats, generally, believe that not enough poor, oppressed, black or Native American people can vote, and that people are being illegally excluded or discouraged from voting; and, what do you know, high turnout tends to favor Democrats. Republicans, generally, believe that too many dumb, evil, ignorant or otherwise unqualified people get to vote, and that lots of ineligible people are fraudulently voting; by extraordinary coincidence, low turnout tends to favor Republicans. Many Republicans may well sincerely believe that it's OK to preferentially go after Democratic election fraud because it's the Democratic election fraud that is real.
So should we take the even-handed, wise-Broderian-pundit view and label it all just a bunch of trumped-up partisan charges, with neither narrative true or both true in roughly equal amounts? I don't think so; maybe it's just my own predictable partisan bias talking, but I find the Democratic narrative much more convincing. The Loeb article links to this 2003 study from the liberal think-tank Demos that I think I've mentioned before, looking at major cases of rumored voter fraud in the preceding several years, and finding most of the rumors vastly exaggerated or without merit; whereas such things as voter intimidation in minority city neighborhoods, phone jamming of get-out-the-vote efforts, and the exclusion of people falsely labeled convicted felons (who I think ought to be able to vote anyway) are quite real. Indeed, the tales of voter fraud themselves provide the stated motivation behind the intimidation campaigns; the intimidators can say that they're just making sure.
I do have to concede one small point--the most egregious case of real voter fraud the Demos study mentions happened to be a Miami mayoral election in 1997 and got lots of local media attention in Florida, probably contributing to the atmosphere that produced such things as the ChoicePoint felon list. But there's still no excuse for it.