Fraud and rumors of fraud

[mmcirvin]

People 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.

Comments

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Republicans, generally, believe that too many dumb, evil, ignorant or otherwise unqualified people get to vote,

At the risk of lowering the level of debate, I must say that this is pure crap. Also, Democrats, in my experience, often believe the same thing, inasmuch as they believe, honestly as far as I can tell, that Republicans are dumb, evil, ignorant and perhaps unqualified to vote.

and that lots of ineligible people are fraudulently voting...

Yeah, I believe that to be true. Well, not lots, but many more than few. I'm not sure they're making a difference, necessarily, but this is the sort of voting fraud that I favor pursuing, and honestly don't see how we can disagree on this point. We might disagree on the fairness of laws that disenfranchise certain people, such as felons, ex-felons, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, uneducated citizens, non-land owners, women, etc. (I'm sure we'd agree on the last three, actually) but I don't see any justice in defrauding the vote, whether you like the Current Occupant or not.

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.

Not this Republican.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Or rather, the Republican-favoring frauds are no less real.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Oh, and there is, perhaps, the feeling among Repubs that the left-leaning media will do the job of investigating the alleged Republican frauds with far greater fervor than those allegedly committed by or for Democrats.

(Whether this is true must, I admit, be weighed against the fact that it's those in power who get investigated by the media, as a norm. Nonetheless, if this were Clinton... heheh)

[ex-askesis860.livejournal.com]

if this were Clinton

We'd have a $70 million investigation that would come up empty-handed?

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

No, it would come up with the same thing that all such investigations produce: "We can't prove the original crime ever happened, but we caught someone big in a small lie under oath, and that sucker's going down for perjury!"

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

inasmuch as they believe, honestly as far as I can tell, that Republicans are dumb, evil, ignorant and perhaps unqualified to vote.

Yeah, that's the additional point that I should have made: this argument eventually comes up a lot from the left on the comment threads of liberal blogs, and it pisses me off no end, in part because "there should be a minimum IQ requirement for voting" is not historically an attitude that favors the type of candidates they advocate. Which probably also relates to the extended "Why Liberals Should Stop Flirting With 'Marching Morons' Fears" essay that I never get around to writing.

So my cartoon picture of the partisan breakdown is overbroad, but I'd say that historically and currently in terms of think-tank advocacy, pressure for expansion of the franchise tends to come from the left and worries about its over-expansion from the right.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Likewise I don't know if a majority of Demos want, for example, franchise for illegal immigrants, even though it's apparent that certain vocal left-wingers do. Like you mine, I'm frequently stuck with gauging the collective wisdom of your party by its most vocal members, often through the selective hearing of my chosen news sources.

We here in Washington State experienced a breathtakingly close G00b3rnatorial election in 2004, as you may recall. The Wikipedia article on the election (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_gubernatorial_election,_2004), at current, has a pretty darned good summary of events. It didn't have a whole lot of fraud accusations, but it did seem to have a lot of incompetence on the part of various counties' Offices of the Elector, especially King County, Washington's most populous (by a long stretch) county. (And perhaps most democratic-leaning, as it contains Seattle.)

About this I feel no differently than I do about CheckPoint felon list or Diebold's laughably poor security standards (which benefit nobody)-- I consider it less likely that they acted on "orders from above" and more likely that they were operating in a lax or even protected-from-unemployment atmosphere without remarkable oversight, like a government contractor rebuilding in Iraq or New Orleans, with little incentive to get it right every time, because the government that hired them is too busy (or apathetic) to do anything but keep writing checks.

The failure to properly run the election doesn't have to be fraudulent, and is more likely universal and bipartisan.

Heh. Your last sentence does rather hit it on the head, though.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Personally (though this is getting further afield) I think a lot of the people who are now illegal immigrants should have been able to immigrate legally, and ought to have a path to citizenship--a view I seem to share with Bush though I disagree about most of the details. The franchise should probably follow that rather than lead.

As for anti-fraud measures themselves, while I don't think people who can't legally vote should be voting, I also think that the benefit of any enforcement measure should be weighed against the costs to legitimate voters, and when heavy-handed voter challenging and such tends to be concentrated in heavily Dem, minority neighborhoods and sends queues down the street, it becomes difficult to keep assuming good faith.

As for the Diebold business, while it's genuinely worrying and it's important to keep pursuing it, I do think its importance in immediate terms has been exaggerated in left political fora to the point of shutting down some discussion about campaign strategy, easier voter registration, overturning felon-disenfranchisement laws, etc. There should be a nickel donated to the Clean Elections Fund for every time somebody jumped into pre-2006-midterm conversations with the post "One word: Diebold." believing this to be a terribly clever retort that rendered the entire discussion moot.

Since the Democrats actually won a lot in '06, the notion that the elections are *entirely* rigged (as opposed to just occasionally rife with local tampering) has become less popular, though I'm sure there are some extreme Naderites out there who believe the Powers that Be just decided to pull the lever to switch from Tweedledum to Tweedledee.

One Word: Diebold!

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Good point about the cost to legit voters. I believe that the voter challenge should amount to a picture ID check and a confirmation that they're on the rolls and haven't voted yet. Budget permitting, one could permit some challenging and yet deter long lines by opening more locations; I wonder how much of the problem is attributed to that, considering that the poor neighborhoods generally get short shrift by every other office of government, so why not the elector? Is there proper incentive for the Electors to learn from the mistakes 4 years ago?

You're right about Diebold as well, but I think that the avenue of "this tamper-prevention system might as well consist of a sign that says 'Do Not Tamper'" instead of the "Well, the Junior VP for marketing went to traffic school with Dick Cheney's nephew, and both of them were speeding on I-95, moving *Away* from the direction of *Haliburton*-- COINCIDENCE?" avenue, which seems less likely to A) change anything and B) draw the attention it needs.