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Voter impersonation in the United States

January 25, 2023

Voter impersonation, also sometimes called in-person voter fraud,[1] is a form of electoral fraud in which a person who is eligible to vote in an election votes more than once, or a person who is not eligible to vote does so by voting under the name of an eligible voter.[1] In the United States, voter ID laws have been enacted in a number of states by Republican legislatures and governors since 2010 with the purported aim of preventing voter impersonation.[2] Existing research and evidence shows that voter impersonation is extremely rare. Between 2000 and 2014, there were only 31 documented instances of voter impersonation.[3][4][5] There is no evidence that it has changed the result of any election. In April 2020, a voter fraud study covering 20 years by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found the level of mail-in ballot fraud "exceedingly rare" since it occurs only in "0.00006 percent" of individual votes nationally, and, in one state, "0.000004 percent — about five times less likely than getting hit by lightning in the United States."[6]

Voter ID laws

Main article: Voter identification laws in the United States
 
Voter ID laws by state, as of April 2022:
  Photo ID required (Strict)
  Photo ID requested (Non-strict)
  Non-photo ID required (Strict)
  Non-photo ID requested (Non-strict)
  No ID required to vote

Voter ID laws target "in-person" voting fraud to deter impersonation by requiring some form of official ID.[7] In many states, voters have other options besides "in-person" voting, such as absentee voting, or requesting an absentee ballot (which includes online voting and voting by mail).[8][9] Absentee voting fraud, for example, is not "deterred by ID laws".[7][10]

A 2015 article by University of Virginia Law School's Michael Gilbert in the Columbia Law Review described how voter ID laws are controversial in the United States in terms of both politics and public law. Gilbert contends that voter ID laws "increase the risk of vote fraud".[7] Those who support voter ID claim to want to protect election integrity by preventing voter fraud.[7] Opponents claim that voter ID laws, "like poll taxes and literacy tests before them, intentionally depress turnout by lawful voters."[7] Critics of voter ID laws have argued that voter impersonation is illogical from the perspective of the perpetrator, as if they are caught, they will face harsh criminal penalties, including up to 5 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 for citizens and possible deportation for non-citizens. Even if they are not caught, they will have cast only one vote for their candidate.[2]

It would be very difficult for someone to coordinate widespread voter impersonation to steal an election. Even if they paid people to vote for their preferred candidate, they could not confirm whether the people they paid voted at all, much less the way they were paid to.[7]

The strictest voter ID law in the United States is Senate Bill 14, which was signed by the Governor of Texas Rick Perry in 2011 and came into effect on January 1, 2012, although it was blocked a few months later. It was reinstated in 2013, but was later found to be discriminatory against minorities in a July 2015 U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.[11] A lower court was required to develop a fix for the law before the November 2016 elections.[12] Jeff Sessions dropped challenges against Senate Bill 14 early in his tenure at the Department of Justice.[13]

Estimates of frequency

The vast majority of voter ID laws in the United States target only voter impersonation, of which there are only 31 documented cases in the United States from the 2000–2014 period.[3] According to PolitiFact, "in-person voter fraud—the kind targeted by the ID law—remains extremely rare".[14] According to the Associated Press, the New York Times, NPR, CNBC, the Guardian, and FactCheck.Org, the available research and evidence point to the type of fraud that would be prevented by voter ID laws as "very rare" or "extremely rare".[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] PolitiFact finds the suggestion that "voter fraud is rampant" false, giving it its "Pants on Fire" rating.[14]

ABC News reported in 2012 that only four cases of voter impersonation had led to convictions in Texas over the previous decade.[2] A study released the same year by News21, an Arizona State University reporting project, identified a total of 10 cases of alleged voter impersonation in the United States since 2000.[22] The same study found that for every case of voter impersonation, there were 207 cases of other types of election fraud. This analysis has, in turn, been criticized by the executive director of the Republican National Lawyers Association, who has said that the study was "highly flawed in its very approach to the issue."[23] Also a 2012 study found no evidence that voter impersonation (in the form of people voting under the auspices of a dead voter) occurred in the 2006 Georgia general elections.[24]

In April 2014, Federal District Court Judge Lynn Adelman ruled in Frank v. Walker that Wisconsin's voter ID law was unconstitutional because "virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin ...".[25] In August 2014, Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School, reported in the Washington Post's Wonkblog that he had identified only 31 credible cases of voter impersonation since 2000.[26] Levitt has also claimed that of these 31 cases, three of them occurred in Texas, while Lorraine Minnite of Rutgers University–Camden estimates there were actually four during the 2000–2014 period.[1] The most serious incident identified involved as many as 24 people trying to vote under assumed names in Brooklyn, but even this would not have made a significant difference in almost any American election.[27] Also that year, a study in the Election Law Journal found that about the same percentage of the U.S. population (about 2.5%) admitted to having been abducted by aliens as admitted to committing voter impersonation. This study also concluded that "strict voter ID requirements address a problem that was certainly not common in the 2012 U.S. election."[28] In 2016, News21 reviewed cases of possible voter impersonation in five states where politicians had expressed concerns about it. They found 38 successful fraud cases in these states from 2012 to 2016, none of which were for voter impersonation.[29]

Outdated voter registration

Main article: Voter suppression in the United States

Based on 2008 data in the 2012 Pew report,[30]

We found millions of out of date registration records due to people moving or dying, but found no evidence that voter fraud resulted.

— November 2016 former PEW research director

In 2012 NPR published figures related to the Pew study claiming that over 1.8 million dead people were registered to vote nationwide and over 3 million voters were registered in multiple states.[31] However, the PEW study to which the article referred had concluded that the "millions of out of date registration records due to people moving or dying" had "found no evidence that voter fraud resulted."[32]

Pew researchers found that military personnel were disproportionately affected by voter registration errors. Most often these involved members of the military and their families who were deployed overseas. For example, in 2008 alone, they reported almost "twice as many registration problems" as the general public.[30]: 7 

In an October 2016 article published in Business Insider, the author noted these voter registration irregularities left some people concerned that the electoral system was vulnerable to the impersonation of dead voters. However, registration irregularities do not intrinsically constitute fraud: in most cases the states are simply slow to eliminate ineligible voters. By 2016, most states had addressed concerns raised by the Pew 2012 report.[33]

Reporting and investigation

The New York Times reported that 18 of the 36 people arrested were charged with absentee ballot fraud - which is not voter impersonation - in the 1997 Miami mayoral election.[34]

According to a Newsday report in 2013, since 2000, there had been 270 cases of 6,000 dead people previously registered to vote in Nassau County, NY, who supposedly cast ballots at some point after their deaths. However, the paper explained: "The votes attributed to the dead are too few, and spread over 20 elections since 2000, to consider them a coordinated fraud attempt. More likely is what investigators in other states have found when examining dead voter records: Clerical errors are to blame, such as a person's vote being assigned to a dead person with a similar name."[35][36]

In October 2020, Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg wrote:

I spent four decades in the Republican trenches, representing GOP presidential and congressional campaigns, working on Election Day operations, recounts, redistricting and other issues, including trying to lift the consent decree.... Nearly every Election Day since 1984 I've worked with Republican poll watchers, observers and lawyers to record and litigate any fraud or election irregularities discovered. The truth is that over all those years Republicans found only isolated incidents of fraud. Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn't exist.[37]

Pew report (2012)

Some alleging voter fraud have cited a 2012 report by the Pew Center on the States titled "Inaccurate, Costly, and Inefficient: Evidence That America's Voter Registration System Needs an Upgrade", which was based on data collected in 2008. However, the study was misinterpreted. As explained by PolitiFact, the study investigated "outdated voter rolls, not fraudulent votes", and made "no mention of noncitizens voting or registering to vote". Pew's election program director also clarified: "We found millions of out of date registration records due to people moving or dying, but found no evidence that voter fraud resulted."[32]

Old Dominion University study (2014)

Proponents of voter ID laws have pointed to a 2014 study by Old Dominion University professors Jesse Richman and David Earnest as justification. The study, which used data developed by the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, concluded that more than 14 percent of self-identified non-citizens in 2008 and 2010 indicated that they were registered to vote, approximately 6.4% of surveyed non-citizens voted in 2008, and 2.2% of surveyed non-citizens voted in 2010.[38][39] However, the study also concluded that voter ID requirements would be ineffective at reducing non-citizen voting.[40] This study has been criticized by numerous academics.[41][42][43] A 2015 study by the managers of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study found that Richman and Earnest's study was "almost certainly flawed" and that, in fact, it was most likely that 0% of non-citizens had voted in recent American elections.[42] Richman and Earnest's findings were the result of measurement error; some individuals who answered the survey checked the wrong boxes in surveys. Richman and Earnest therefore extrapolated from a handful of wrongfully classified cases to achieve an exaggerated number of individuals who appeared to be non-citizen voters.[42] Richman later conceded that "the response error issues ... may have biased our numbers".[44] Richman has also rebuked President Trump for claiming that millions voted illegally in 2016.[44] Brian Schaffner, Professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was part of the team that debunked Richman and Earnest's study said that the study

... is not only wrong, it is irresponsible social science and should never have been published in the first place. There is no evidence that non-citizens have voted in recent U.S. elections ... It is bad research, because it fails to understand basic facts about the data it uses. Indeed, it took me and my colleagues only a few hours to figure out why the authors' findings were wrong and to produce the evidence needed to prove as much. The authors were essentially basing their claims on two pieces of data associated with the large survey—a question that asks people whether they are citizens and official vote records to which each respondent has been matched to determine whether he or she had voted. Both these pieces of information include some small amounts of measurement error, as is true of all survey questions. What the authors failed to consider is that measurement error was entirely responsible for their results. In fact, once my colleagues and I accounted for that error, we found that there were essentially zero non-citizens who voted in recent elections.

— Brian Schaffner, [43]

University of California, San Diego, study (2017)

A 2017 study in The Journal of Politics "shows that strict identification laws have a differentially negative impact on the turnout of racial and ethnic minorities in primaries and general elections. Voter ID laws skew democracy in favor of whites and those on the political right"[45] The results of this study were challenged in a paper by Stanford political scientist Justin Grimmer and four other political scientists.[46] The paper says that the findings in the aforementioned study "a product of data inaccuracies, the presented evidence does not support the stated conclusion, and alternative model specifications produce highly variable results. When errors are corrected, one can recover positive, negative, or null estimates of the effect of voter ID laws on turnout, precluding firm conclusions."[46] In a response, the authors of the original study dismissed the aforementioned criticisms, and stood by the findings of the original article.[47] Columbia University statistician and political scientist Andrew Gelman said that the response by the authors of the original study "did not seem convincing" and that the finding of racial discrepancies in the original study does not stand.[48]

Fish v. Kobach (2018)

Fish v. Kobach was a bench trial in United States District Court for the District of Kansas in which five Kansas residents and the League of Women Voters contested the legality of the Documentary Proof of Citizenship (DPOC) requirement of the Kansas Secure and Fair Elections (SAFE) Act, enacted in 2011,[49] which took effect in 2013.[50] Then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach claimed these procedures were needed to protect the nation from a supposedly massive problem of vote fraud by people not legally allowed to do so, including 11.3 percent of non-citizens residing in the US amounting to some 3.2 million votes in 2016, greater than Hillary Clinton's lead in the 2016 popular vote.[51][52]

On June 18 and 19, 2018, Judge Robinson, appointed to the bench by Republican President George W. Bush, published 118 pages of “Findings of fact and conclusions of law” in this case.[53] In broad strokes, she sided with the plaintiffs on most of the major points in question and with the defense on a few relatively minor points.

For example, “Defendant's expert Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, 'a think tank whose mission [is to] formulate and promote conservative public policies. ... [He] cited a U.S. GAO study for the proposition that the GAO 'found that up to 3 percent of the 30,000 individuals called for jury duty from voter registration roles over a two-year period in just one U.S. district court were not U.S. citizens.' On cross-examination, however, he acknowledged that he omitted the following facts: the GAO study contained information on a total of 8 district courts; 4 of the 8 reported that there was not a single non-citizen who had been called for jury duty; and the 3 remaining district courts reported that less than 1% of those called for jury duty from voter rolls were noncitizens. Therefore, his report misleadingly described the only district court with the highest percentage of people reporting that they were noncitizens, while omitting mention of the 7 other courts described in the GAO report, including 4 that had no incidents of noncitizens on the rolls. ... In contrast, Plaintiffs offered Dr. Lorraine Minnite, an objective expert witness, who provided compelling testimony about Defendant's claims of noncitizen registration. Dr. Minnite ... has extensively researched and studied the incidence and effect of voter fraud in American elections. Her published research on the topic spans over a decade and includes her full-length, peer reviewed book, The Myth of Voter Fraud, ... .Dr. Minnite testified that when she began researching the issue of voter fraud, ..., she began with a 'blank slate' about the conclusions she would ultimately draw from the research. ... Although she admits that noncitizen registration and voting does at times occur, Dr. Minnite testified that there is no empirical evidence to support Defendant's claims in this case that noncitizen registration and voting in Kansas are largescale problems. ... [M]any of these cases reflect isolated incidents of avoidable administrative errors ... and / or misunderstanding on the part of applicants. ... For example, 100 individuals in ELVIS [the Kansas Election Voter Information System] have birth dates in the 1800s, indicating that they are older than 118. And 400 individuals have birth dates after their date of registration, indicating they registered to vote before they were born. ... The voting rate among purported noncitizen registrations on [a Kansas temporary drivers license] match list is around 1%, whereas the voting rate among registrants in Kansas more generally is around 70%.”[54]

Judge Robinson saw no credible evidence to support the claims of substantive noncitizen voting, the key claim of the defendant.

History

In-person voter fraud (1968–1982)

Conservative lawyer Hans von Spakovsky has claimed that significant in-person voter fraud occurred in Brooklyn from 1968 to 1982, but Richard Hasen has argued that this fraud, because it involved election officials colluding with one another, could not have been prevented by a voter ID law.[55]

Voter fraud claims in the 2016 presidential election

President Donald Trump claimed without evidence that between 3 and 5 million people cost him the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by voting illegally. He claimed that he narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016 in New Hampshire (and that Senator Kelly Ayotte also lost her bid for re-election in New Hampshire) because thousands of people were illegally bused there from Massachusetts.[56] There is no evidence to support Trump's claims, which the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office determined were unfounded.[57][58]

Trump claimed that "millions voted illegally in the election" based on "studies and evidence that people have presented him".[59] At that time, CNN reported that Trump had based his fraud voter claims on information from Gregg Phillips, VoteStand founder.[60][61] While members of Trump's cabinet and family were registered to vote in multiple states, this was considered to be oversight, not fraud.[62] In response to Trump's allegations, On February 10, Ellen L. Weintraub, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) Commissioner, requested that Trump provide evidence of the "thousands of felony criminal offenses under New Hampshire law".[63] In a CNN interview on February 12, Stephen Miller seemed to refer to the 2012 Pew Research Center (PEW) study[30] but was unable at that time to support claims of voter fraud as evidence.[64][56] There is no evidence to support Trump's assertion that there was substantial voter fraud in the 2016 election.

Voter fraud commission (2017)

Main article: Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity
 
President Trump signing the Executive Order establishing the Voter Fraud Commission

On May 11, 2017, Trump signed an executive order to establish a voter fraud commission to conduct an investigation into voter fraud.[65] He had announced his intention to create the commission on January 25.[59] The commission's chairman was Vice President Mike Pence with Kris Kobach as vice chairman.[65] Kobach, who is the Secretary of State of Kansas, calls for stricter voter ID laws in the United States.[66][67] Kobach claims there is a voter fraud crisis in the United States.[68][69][70][71][72] Trump's creation of the commission was criticized by voting rights advocates, scholars and experts, and newspaper editorial boards as a pretext for, and prelude to, voter suppression.[73][74][75][76][77]

In January 2018, Trump abruptly disbanded the commission,[78] which met only twice.[79] The commission found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the United States.[78][79]

Voter fraud claims in the 2020 presidential election

See also: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, Post-election lawsuits related to the 2020 United States presidential election, and Republican efforts to restrict voting following the 2020 presidential election

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump indicated in Twitter posts, interviews and speeches that he might refuse to recognize the outcome of the election if he were defeated; Trump falsely suggested that the election would be rigged against him.[80][81][82] Trump repeatedly claimed that "the only way" he could lose would be if the election was "rigged" and repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power after the election.[83][84] Trump also attacked mail-in voting throughout the campaign, falsely claiming that the practice contained high rates of fraud.[85][86][87] In September 2020, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, a Trump appointee, testified under oath that the FBI has "not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise."[88]

After most of the major news organizations declared Biden the President-elect on November 7,[89][90][91][92] Trump refused to accept his loss, declaring "this election is far from over" and alleging election fraud without providing evidence.[93] Multiple lawsuits alleging electoral fraud were filed by the Trump campaign, all of which were dismissed as having no merit.[94] Republican officials questioned the legitimacy of the election and aired conspiracy theories regarding various types of alleged fraud.[95][96] In early 2021, motivated by the claims of widespread voter fraud and the resulting legitimacy crisis among the Republican base, GOP lawmakers in a number of states initiated a push to make voting laws more restrictive.[97] At least four cases involving allegations of, and convictions for, voter fraud in favor of Donald Trump emerged in April 2021. In April 2021, Barry Morphew of Colorado admitted to FBI agents that he cast a ballot in November 2020 in favor of Trump in the name of his missing wife. In a further twist, in May 2021, he was charged with murdering his wife, who had disappeared in May 2020.[98] Also in April 2021, Bruce Bartman of Pennsylvania was convicted of voter fraud charges after he cast a ballot for Trump in the name of his dead mother. As of April 30, 2021, two other Pennsylvanians had criminal cases pending regarding accusations of voter fraud by casting illegal ballots for Donald Trump.[99]

Another case of voter fraud in favor of Donald Trump emerged from Nevada. In October 2021, Republican Donald Kirk Hartle of Nevada was charged with two felony counts of voter fraud, one for voting twice and one that he forged his deceased wife's name to vote with her ballot. Nevada law calls for all registered voters to receive a mail-in ballot. Election officials discovered that a ballot was received from the deceased but still registered Rosemarie Hartle. A few days after the election of November 2020, Donald Hartle told election investigators that his wife's ballot never came to the house. While Rosemary Hartle's ballot was illegally cast by a Republican, the story was used by Tucker Carlson on Fox News to support claims of voter fraud by Democrats.[100]

By 2021, there were 510 pending election fraud offenses against 43 defendants and 386 active election fraud investigations, in the state of Texas alone.[101]

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Sources

  • Robinson, Julie A. (June 18, 2018). "Findings of fact and conclusions of law in Fish v. Kobach, Case No. 16-2105-JAR-JPO, and Bednasek and Kobach, Case No. 15-9300-JAR-JPO (published 2018-06-18 with corrections 2018-06-19)" (PDF). US District Court for the District of Kansas. Retrieved June 28, 2018.

January 25, 2023
voter, impersonation, united, states, voter, impersonation, also, sometimes, called, person, voter, fraud, form, electoral, fraud, which, person, eligible, vote, election, votes, more, than, once, person, eligible, vote, does, voting, under, name, eligible, vo. Voter impersonation also sometimes called in person voter fraud 1 is a form of electoral fraud in which a person who is eligible to vote in an election votes more than once or a person who is not eligible to vote does so by voting under the name of an eligible voter 1 In the United States voter ID laws have been enacted in a number of states by Republican legislatures and governors since 2010 with the purported aim of preventing voter impersonation 2 Existing research and evidence shows that voter impersonation is extremely rare Between 2000 and 2014 there were only 31 documented instances of voter impersonation 3 4 5 There is no evidence that it has changed the result of any election In April 2020 a voter fraud study covering 20 years by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found the level of mail in ballot fraud exceedingly rare since it occurs only in 0 00006 percent of individual votes nationally and in one state 0 000004 percent about five times less likely than getting hit by lightning in the United States 6 Contents 1 Voter ID laws 2 Estimates of frequency 3 Outdated voter registration 4 Reporting and investigation 4 1 Pew report 2012 4 2 Old Dominion University study 2014 4 3 University of California San Diego study 2017 4 4 Fish v Kobach 2018 5 History 5 1 In person voter fraud 1968 1982 5 2 Voter fraud claims in the 2016 presidential election 5 2 1 Voter fraud commission 2017 5 3 Voter fraud claims in the 2020 presidential election 6 References 7 SourcesVoter ID laws EditMain article Voter identification laws in the United States Voter ID laws by state as of April 2022 update Photo ID required Strict Photo ID requested Non strict Non photo ID required Strict Non photo ID requested Non strict No ID required to vote Voter ID laws target in person voting fraud to deter impersonation by requiring some form of official ID 7 In many states voters have other options besides in person voting such as absentee voting or requesting an absentee ballot which includes online voting and voting by mail 8 9 Absentee voting fraud for example is not deterred by ID laws 7 10 A 2015 article by University of Virginia Law School s Michael Gilbert in the Columbia Law Review described how voter ID laws are controversial in the United States in terms of both politics and public law Gilbert contends that voter ID laws increase the risk of vote fraud 7 Those who support voter ID claim to want to protect election integrity by preventing voter fraud 7 Opponents claim that voter ID laws like poll taxes and literacy tests before them intentionally depress turnout by lawful voters 7 Critics of voter ID laws have argued that voter impersonation is illogical from the perspective of the perpetrator as if they are caught they will face harsh criminal penalties including up to 5 years in prison and a fine of up to 10 000 for citizens and possible deportation for non citizens Even if they are not caught they will have cast only one vote for their candidate 2 It would be very difficult for someone to coordinate widespread voter impersonation to steal an election Even if they paid people to vote for their preferred candidate they could not confirm whether the people they paid voted at all much less the way they were paid to 7 The strictest voter ID law in the United States is Senate Bill 14 which was signed by the Governor of Texas Rick Perry in 2011 and came into effect on January 1 2012 although it was blocked a few months later It was reinstated in 2013 but was later found to be discriminatory against minorities in a July 2015 U S 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling 11 A lower court was required to develop a fix for the law before the November 2016 elections 12 Jeff Sessions dropped challenges against Senate Bill 14 early in his tenure at the Department of Justice 13 Estimates of frequency EditThe vast majority of voter ID laws in the United States target only voter impersonation of which there are only 31 documented cases in the United States from the 2000 2014 period 3 According to PolitiFact in person voter fraud the kind targeted by the ID law remains extremely rare 14 According to the Associated Press the New York Times NPR CNBC the Guardian and FactCheck Org the available research and evidence point to the type of fraud that would be prevented by voter ID laws as very rare or extremely rare 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 PolitiFact finds the suggestion that voter fraud is rampant false giving it its Pants on Fire rating 14 ABC News reported in 2012 that only four cases of voter impersonation had led to convictions in Texas over the previous decade 2 A study released the same year by News21 an Arizona State University reporting project identified a total of 10 cases of alleged voter impersonation in the United States since 2000 22 The same study found that for every case of voter impersonation there were 207 cases of other types of election fraud This analysis has in turn been criticized by the executive director of the Republican National Lawyers Association who has said that the study was highly flawed in its very approach to the issue 23 Also a 2012 study found no evidence that voter impersonation in the form of people voting under the auspices of a dead voter occurred in the 2006 Georgia general elections 24 In April 2014 Federal District Court Judge Lynn Adelman ruled in Frank v Walker that Wisconsin s voter ID law was unconstitutional because virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin 25 In August 2014 Justin Levitt a professor at Loyola Law School reported in the Washington Post s Wonkblog that he had identified only 31 credible cases of voter impersonation since 2000 26 Levitt has also claimed that of these 31 cases three of them occurred in Texas while Lorraine Minnite of Rutgers University Camden estimates there were actually four during the 2000 2014 period 1 The most serious incident identified involved as many as 24 people trying to vote under assumed names in Brooklyn but even this would not have made a significant difference in almost any American election 27 Also that year a study in the Election Law Journal found that about the same percentage of the U S population about 2 5 admitted to having been abducted by aliens as admitted to committing voter impersonation This study also concluded that strict voter ID requirements address a problem that was certainly not common in the 2012 U S election 28 In 2016 News21 reviewed cases of possible voter impersonation in five states where politicians had expressed concerns about it They found 38 successful fraud cases in these states from 2012 to 2016 none of which were for voter impersonation 29 Outdated voter registration EditMain article Voter suppression in the United States Based on 2008 data in the 2012 Pew report 30 We found millions of out of date registration records due to people moving or dying but found no evidence that voter fraud resulted November 2016 former PEW research director In 2012 NPR published figures related to the Pew study claiming that over 1 8 million dead people were registered to vote nationwide and over 3 million voters were registered in multiple states 31 However the PEW study to which the article referred had concluded that the millions of out of date registration records due to people moving or dying had found no evidence that voter fraud resulted 32 Pew researchers found that military personnel were disproportionately affected by voter registration errors Most often these involved members of the military and their families who were deployed overseas For example in 2008 alone they reported almost twice as many registration problems as the general public 30 7 In an October 2016 article published in Business Insider the author noted these voter registration irregularities left some people concerned that the electoral system was vulnerable to the impersonation of dead voters However registration irregularities do not intrinsically constitute fraud in most cases the states are simply slow to eliminate ineligible voters By 2016 most states had addressed concerns raised by the Pew 2012 report 33 Reporting and investigation EditThe New York Times reported that 18 of the 36 people arrested were charged with absentee ballot fraud which is not voter impersonation in the 1997 Miami mayoral election 34 According to a Newsday report in 2013 since 2000 there had been 270 cases of 6 000 dead people previously registered to vote in Nassau County NY who supposedly cast ballots at some point after their deaths However the paper explained The votes attributed to the dead are too few and spread over 20 elections since 2000 to consider them a coordinated fraud attempt More likely is what investigators in other states have found when examining dead voter records Clerical errors are to blame such as a person s vote being assigned to a dead person with a similar name 35 36 In October 2020 Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg wrote I spent four decades in the Republican trenches representing GOP presidential and congressional campaigns working on Election Day operations recounts redistricting and other issues including trying to lift the consent decree Nearly every Election Day since 1984 I ve worked with Republican poll watchers observers and lawyers to record and litigate any fraud or election irregularities discovered The truth is that over all those years Republicans found only isolated incidents of fraud Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party People have spent a lot of time looking for it but it doesn t exist 37 Pew report 2012 Edit Some alleging voter fraud have cited a 2012 report by the Pew Center on the States titled Inaccurate Costly and Inefficient Evidence That America s Voter Registration System Needs an Upgrade which was based on data collected in 2008 However the study was misinterpreted As explained by PolitiFact the study investigated outdated voter rolls not fraudulent votes and made no mention of noncitizens voting or registering to vote Pew s election program director also clarified We found millions of out of date registration records due to people moving or dying but found no evidence that voter fraud resulted 32 Old Dominion University study 2014 Edit Proponents of voter ID laws have pointed to a 2014 study by Old Dominion University professors Jesse Richman and David Earnest as justification The study which used data developed by the Cooperative Congressional Election Study concluded that more than 14 percent of self identified non citizens in 2008 and 2010 indicated that they were registered to vote approximately 6 4 of surveyed non citizens voted in 2008 and 2 2 of surveyed non citizens voted in 2010 38 39 However the study also concluded that voter ID requirements would be ineffective at reducing non citizen voting 40 This study has been criticized by numerous academics 41 42 43 A 2015 study by the managers of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study found that Richman and Earnest s study was almost certainly flawed and that in fact it was most likely that 0 of non citizens had voted in recent American elections 42 Richman and Earnest s findings were the result of measurement error some individuals who answered the survey checked the wrong boxes in surveys Richman and Earnest therefore extrapolated from a handful of wrongfully classified cases to achieve an exaggerated number of individuals who appeared to be non citizen voters 42 Richman later conceded that the response error issues may have biased our numbers 44 Richman has also rebuked President Trump for claiming that millions voted illegally in 2016 44 Brian Schaffner Professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts Amherst who was part of the team that debunked Richman and Earnest s study said that the study is not only wrong it is irresponsible social science and should never have been published in the first place There is no evidence that non citizens have voted in recent U S elections It is bad research because it fails to understand basic facts about the data it uses Indeed it took me and my colleagues only a few hours to figure out why the authors findings were wrong and to produce the evidence needed to prove as much The authors were essentially basing their claims on two pieces of data associated with the large survey a question that asks people whether they are citizens and official vote records to which each respondent has been matched to determine whether he or she had voted Both these pieces of information include some small amounts of measurement error as is true of all survey questions What the authors failed to consider is that measurement error was entirely responsible for their results In fact once my colleagues and I accounted for that error we found that there were essentially zero non citizens who voted in recent elections Brian Schaffner 43 University of California San Diego study 2017 Edit A 2017 study in The Journal of Politics shows that strict identification laws have a differentially negative impact on the turnout of racial and ethnic minorities in primaries and general elections Voter ID laws skew democracy in favor of whites and those on the political right 45 The results of this study were challenged in a paper by Stanford political scientist Justin Grimmer and four other political scientists 46 The paper says that the findings in the aforementioned study a product of data inaccuracies the presented evidence does not support the stated conclusion and alternative model specifications produce highly variable results When errors are corrected one can recover positive negative or null estimates of the effect of voter ID laws on turnout precluding firm conclusions 46 In a response the authors of the original study dismissed the aforementioned criticisms and stood by the findings of the original article 47 Columbia University statistician and political scientist Andrew Gelman said that the response by the authors of the original study did not seem convincing and that the finding of racial discrepancies in the original study does not stand 48 Fish v Kobach 2018 Edit Fish v Kobach was a bench trial in United States District Court for the District of Kansas in which five Kansas residents and the League of Women Voters contested the legality of the Documentary Proof of Citizenship DPOC requirement of the Kansas Secure and Fair Elections SAFE Act enacted in 2011 49 which took effect in 2013 50 Then Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach claimed these procedures were needed to protect the nation from a supposedly massive problem of vote fraud by people not legally allowed to do so including 11 3 percent of non citizens residing in the US amounting to some 3 2 million votes in 2016 greater than Hillary Clinton s lead in the 2016 popular vote 51 52 On June 18 and 19 2018 Judge Robinson appointed to the bench by Republican President George W Bush published 118 pages of Findings of fact and conclusions of law in this case 53 In broad strokes she sided with the plaintiffs on most of the major points in question and with the defense on a few relatively minor points For example Defendant s expert Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation a think tank whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies He cited a U S GAO study for the proposition that the GAO found that up to 3 percent of the 30 000 individuals called for jury duty from voter registration roles over a two year period in just one U S district court were not U S citizens On cross examination however he acknowledged that he omitted the following facts the GAO study contained information on a total of 8 district courts 4 of the 8 reported that there was not a single non citizen who had been called for jury duty and the 3 remaining district courts reported that less than 1 of those called for jury duty from voter rolls were noncitizens Therefore his report misleadingly described the only district court with the highest percentage of people reporting that they were noncitizens while omitting mention of the 7 other courts described in the GAO report including 4 that had no incidents of noncitizens on the rolls In contrast Plaintiffs offered Dr Lorraine Minnite an objective expert witness who provided compelling testimony about Defendant s claims of noncitizen registration Dr Minnite has extensively researched and studied the incidence and effect of voter fraud in American elections Her published research on the topic spans over a decade and includes her full length peer reviewed book The Myth of Voter Fraud Dr Minnite testified that when she began researching the issue of voter fraud she began with a blank slate about the conclusions she would ultimately draw from the research Although she admits that noncitizen registration and voting does at times occur Dr Minnite testified that there is no empirical evidence to support Defendant s claims in this case that noncitizen registration and voting in Kansas are largescale problems M any of these cases reflect isolated incidents of avoidable administrative errors and or misunderstanding on the part of applicants For example 100 individuals in ELVIS the Kansas Election Voter Information System have birth dates in the 1800s indicating that they are older than 118 And 400 individuals have birth dates after their date of registration indicating they registered to vote before they were born The voting rate among purported noncitizen registrations on a Kansas temporary drivers license match list is around 1 whereas the voting rate among registrants in Kansas more generally is around 70 54 Judge Robinson saw no credible evidence to support the claims of substantive noncitizen voting the key claim of the defendant History EditIn person voter fraud 1968 1982 Edit Conservative lawyer Hans von Spakovsky has claimed that significant in person voter fraud occurred in Brooklyn from 1968 to 1982 but Richard Hasen has argued that this fraud because it involved election officials colluding with one another could not have been prevented by a voter ID law 55 Voter fraud claims in the 2016 presidential election Edit President Donald Trump claimed without evidence that between 3 and 5 million people cost him the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by voting illegally He claimed that he narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016 in New Hampshire and that Senator Kelly Ayotte also lost her bid for re election in New Hampshire because thousands of people were illegally bused there from Massachusetts 56 There is no evidence to support Trump s claims which the New Hampshire Attorney General s Office determined were unfounded 57 58 Trump claimed that millions voted illegally in the election based on studies and evidence that people have presented him 59 At that time CNN reported that Trump had based his fraud voter claims on information from Gregg Phillips VoteStand founder 60 61 While members of Trump s cabinet and family were registered to vote in multiple states this was considered to be oversight not fraud 62 In response to Trump s allegations On February 10 Ellen L Weintraub the Federal Election Commission FEC Commissioner requested that Trump provide evidence of the thousands of felony criminal offenses under New Hampshire law 63 In a CNN interview on February 12 Stephen Miller seemed to refer to the 2012 Pew Research Center PEW study 30 but was unable at that time to support claims of voter fraud as evidence 64 56 There is no evidence to support Trump s assertion that there was substantial voter fraud in the 2016 election Voter fraud commission 2017 Edit Main article Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity President Trump signing the Executive Order establishing the Voter Fraud Commission On May 11 2017 Trump signed an executive order to establish a voter fraud commission to conduct an investigation into voter fraud 65 He had announced his intention to create the commission on January 25 59 The commission s chairman was Vice President Mike Pence with Kris Kobach as vice chairman 65 Kobach who is the Secretary of State of Kansas calls for stricter voter ID laws in the United States 66 67 Kobach claims there is a voter fraud crisis in the United States 68 69 70 71 72 Trump s creation of the commission was criticized by voting rights advocates scholars and experts and newspaper editorial boards as a pretext for and prelude to voter suppression 73 74 75 76 77 In January 2018 Trump abruptly disbanded the commission 78 which met only twice 79 The commission found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the United States 78 79 Voter fraud claims in the 2020 presidential election Edit See also Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election Post election lawsuits related to the 2020 United States presidential election and Republican efforts to restrict voting following the 2020 presidential election During the 2020 presidential campaign Trump indicated in Twitter posts interviews and speeches that he might refuse to recognize the outcome of the election if he were defeated Trump falsely suggested that the election would be rigged against him 80 81 82 Trump repeatedly claimed that the only way he could lose would be if the election was rigged and repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power after the election 83 84 Trump also attacked mail in voting throughout the campaign falsely claiming that the practice contained high rates of fraud 85 86 87 In September 2020 FBI Director Christopher A Wray a Trump appointee testified under oath that the FBI has not seen historically any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election whether it s by mail or otherwise 88 After most of the major news organizations declared Biden the President elect on November 7 89 90 91 92 Trump refused to accept his loss declaring this election is far from over and alleging election fraud without providing evidence 93 Multiple lawsuits alleging electoral fraud were filed by the Trump campaign all of which were dismissed as having no merit 94 Republican officials questioned the legitimacy of the election and aired conspiracy theories regarding various types of alleged fraud 95 96 In early 2021 motivated by the claims of widespread voter fraud and the resulting legitimacy crisis among the Republican base GOP lawmakers in a number of states initiated a push to make voting laws more restrictive 97 At least four cases involving allegations of and convictions for voter fraud in favor of Donald Trump emerged in April 2021 In April 2021 Barry Morphew of Colorado admitted to FBI agents that he cast a ballot in November 2020 in favor of Trump in the name of his missing wife In a further twist in May 2021 he was charged with murdering his wife who had disappeared in May 2020 98 Also in April 2021 Bruce Bartman of Pennsylvania was convicted of voter fraud charges after he cast a ballot for Trump in the name of his dead mother As of April 30 2021 two other Pennsylvanians had criminal cases pending regarding accusations of voter fraud by casting illegal ballots for Donald Trump 99 Another case of voter fraud in favor of Donald Trump emerged from Nevada In October 2021 Republican Donald Kirk Hartle of Nevada was charged with two felony counts of voter fraud one for voting twice and one that he forged his deceased wife s name to vote with her ballot Nevada law calls for all registered voters to receive a mail in ballot Election officials discovered that a ballot was received from the deceased but still registered Rosemarie Hartle A few days after the election of November 2020 Donald Hartle told election investigators that his wife s ballot never came to the house While Rosemary Hartle s ballot was illegally cast by a Republican the story was used by Tucker Carlson on Fox News to support claims of voter fraud by Democrats 100 By 2021 there were 510 pending election fraud offenses against 43 defendants and 386 active election fraud investigations in the state of Texas alone 101 References Edit a b c Booker Cory August 18 2015 Lightning strikes more common in Texas than in person voter fraud says Cory Booker Politifact Retrieved March 2 2016 a b c Bingham Amy September 12 2012 Voter Fraud Non Existent Problem or Election Threatening Epidemic ABC News Retrieved December 9 2015 a b Bump Philip October 13 2014 The disconnect between voter ID laws and voter fraud The Washington Post The Fix blog Retrieved July 26 2016 Levitt Justin August 6 2014 A comprehensive investigation of voter impersonation finds 31 credible incidents out of one billion ballots cast The Washington Post a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint url status link Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth PDF Brennan Center Retrieved June 22 2021 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint url status link Charles Stewart III Amber McReynolds April 28 2020 Let s put the vote by mail fraud myth to rest The Hill Retrieved July 28 2020 via MIT School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences a b c d e f Gilbert Michael D September 5 2014 The Problem of Voter Fraud Columbia Law Review 115 3 739 75 Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No 2014 56 Virginia Law and Economics Research Paper No 2014 15 Absentee and Early Voting National Conference of State Legislatures March 20 2017 Retrieved July 9 2017 Bill Bradbury January 1 2005 Vote by Mail The Real Winner Is Democracy The Washington Post Oppose Voter ID Legislation Fact Sheet American Civil Liberties Union Retrieved November 7 2020 Malewitz Jim August 5 2015 Court Texas Voter ID Law Violates Voting Rights Act Texas four year old voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act but is not a poll tax barred under the U S Constitution a federal appeals court has ruled Texas Tribune Retrieved July 9 2017 Barnes Robert July 20 2016 Appeals court says Texas voter ID law discriminates against minorities The Washington Post Retrieved July 9 2017 Tesfaye Sophia February 27 2017 Jeff Sessions drops DOJ lawsuit against discriminatory Texas voter ID case reverses 6 years of litigation The Department of Justice plans to abandon its claim that Texas GOP lawmakers targeted voters of color Salon Retrieved July 9 2017 a b The fact is voter fraud is rampant Light a match to Greg Abbott s ridiculous claim about rampant voter fraud Retrieved August 3 2016 In Wisconsin ID law proved insurmountable for many voters Associated Press Retrieved May 14 2017 Liptak Adam March 23 2015 Wisconsin Decides Not to Enforce Voter ID Law The New York Times Retrieved May 14 2017 Despite Court Ruling Voting Rights Fight Continues In North Carolina NPR Retrieved May 14 2017 Trump s Bogus Voter Fraud Claims FactCheck org FactCheck org October 19 2016 Retrieved May 14 2017 Ali Vitali Peter Alexander Kelly O Donnell May 11 2017 Trump establishes vote fraud commission CNBC Retrieved May 14 2017 Trump voter fraud claim was 800lb gorilla in jury box at Texas trial The Guardian Associated Press February 11 2017 Retrieved May 14 2017 Jill Colvin October 18 2016 Trump wrongly insists voter fraud is very very common Donald Trump is insisting voter fraud does indeed pose a significant threat to the integrity of the U S electoral system U S News amp World Report Associated Press Retrieved April 6 2020 Report Voter impersonation a rarity UPI August 12 2012 Retrieved December 9 2015 Davis Janel September 19 2012 In person voter fraud a very rare phenomenon Politifact Retrieved December 9 2015 Hood M V Gillespie William March 2012 They Just Do Not Vote Like They Used To A Methodology to Empirically Assess Election Fraud Social Science Quarterly 93 1 76 94 doi 10 1111 j 1540 6237 2011 00837 x Reilly Ryan April 29 2014 In Person Voter Fraud Is Virtually Nonexistent Federal Judge Rules The Huffington Post Retrieved March 1 2016 Levitt Justin August 6 2014 A comprehensive investigation of voter impersonation finds 31 credible incidents out of one billion ballots cast The Washington Post Retrieved December 9 2015 Bump Philip October 13 2014 The disconnect between voter ID laws and voter fraud The Washington Post Retrieved February 7 2016 Ahlquist John S Mayer Kenneth R Jackman Simon December 1 2014 Alien Abduction and Voter Impersonation in the 2012 U S General Election Evidence from a Survey List Experiment Election Law Journal Rules Politics and Policy 13 4 460 475 doi 10 1089 elj 2013 0231 Edge Sami August 21 2016 A review of key states with Voter ID laws found no voter impersonation fraud Center for Public Integrity a b c Kate Kelly February 2012 Inaccurate Costly and Inefficient Evidence That America s Voter Registration System Needs an Upgrade PDF Washington Pew Research Center p 12 Retrieved February 12 2017 Pam Fessler February 14 2012 Study 1 8 Million Dead People Still Registered to Vote NPR Retrieved January 18 2016 a b Lauren Carroll January 25 2017 Sean Spicer wrongly uses Pew study to bolster claim that non citizens vote in large numbers PolitiFact com Retrieved February 12 2017 Cassidy Christina October 25 2016 AP Fact Check Voter registration problems do not make system vulnerable to widespread fraud Business Insider 18 are arrested in 1997 Miami Ballot Fraud The New York Times October 29 1998 Retrieved January 18 2016 Cergol Greg October 31 2013 More Than 200 Dead People Shown to Have Voted in NY County Elections Report WNBC Retrieved January 18 2016 Analysis 100s of dead LIers voted in Nassau Newsday Ginsberg Benjamin L Opinion My party is destroying itself on the altar of Trump The Washington Post Richman Jesse October 24 2014 Washington Post Could non citizens decide the November election The Washington Post Retrieved June 18 2015 Richman Jesse T Chattha Gulshan A Earnest David C December 1 2014 Do non citizens vote in U S elections Electoral Studies 36 149 157 doi 10 1016 j electstud 2014 09 001 Hiltzik Michael October 31 2014 Today s voting freakout noncitizens are coming to steal your election Los Angeles Times Retrieved March 28 2016 Bump Philip October 27 2014 Methodological challenges affect study of non citizens voting The Washington Post Retrieved February 7 2016 a b c Ansolabehere Stephen Luks Samantha Schaffner Brian F December 2015 The perils of cherry picking low frequency events in large sample surveys Electoral Studies 40 409 10 doi 10 1016 j electstud 2015 07 002 a b Trump s Claims About Illegal Votes Are Nonsense I Debunked the Study He Cites as Evidence Politico Magazine Retrieved January 27 2017 a b Cohn Nate January 26 2017 Illegal Voting Claims and Why They Don t Hold Up The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved January 26 2017 Hajnal Zoltan Lajevardi Nazita Nielson Lindsay January 5 2017 Voter Identification Laws and the Suppression of Minority Votes The Journal of Politics 79 2 363 379 doi 10 1086 688343 ISSN 0022 3816 S2CID 20943777 a b Grimmer Justin Hersh Eitan Meredith Marc Mummolo Jonathan Nall Clayton April 18 2018 Obstacles to Estimating Voter ID Laws Effect on Turnout The Journal of Politics 80 3 1045 1051 doi 10 1086 696618 ISSN 0022 3816 S2CID 158764888 Hajnal Zoltan Kuk John Lajevardi Nazita April 18 2018 We All Agree Strict Voter ID Laws Disproportionately Burden Minorities The Journal of Politics 80 3 1052 1059 doi 10 1086 696617 ISSN 0022 3816 S2CID 158480092 Gelman Andrew June 11 2018 Analysis A new controversy erupts over whether voter identification laws suppress minority turnout The Washington Post Retrieved June 11 2018 Kobach Kris W April 18 2011 Kansas Secure and Fair Elections SAFE Act Signed by Governor PDF Press release Kansas Secretary of State Retrieved March 18 2018 Secure and Fair Elections S A F E Act Regulations PDF Kansas Secretary of State February 24 2012 Retrieved March 18 2018 Lowry Bryan March 13 2018 His own witness doesn t back Kobach claims that illegal votes cost Trump popular vote Kansas City Star Retrieved March 18 2018 Official 2016 Presidential General Election Results PDF Federal Election Commission December 2017 Retrieved February 12 2018 Robinson 2018 Robinson 2018 pp 52 58 Mayer Jane October 29 2012 The Voter Fraud Myth The New Yorker Retrieved March 11 2016 a b Maxwell Tani February 12 2017 You have provided absolutely no evidence Stephanopoulos grills Trump adviser in a testy interview about voter fraud Business Insider Retrieved February 12 2017 Farley Robert February 14 2017 No Evidence of Busing Voters to N H FactCheck org Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania Attorney general s office No evidence out of state voters bused into New Hampshire Concord Monitor May 29 2018 a b Trump plans major investigation into voter fraud amid groundless claims The Guardian January 25 2017 Retrieved February 12 2017 Ryan Josiah January 27 2017 Trump cited study author still refuses to show proof of voter fraud CNN Retrieved January 27 2017 Lopez German January 25 2017 It s official Trump is taking his voter fraud myth to the White House with real consequences Vox Retrieved January 25 2017 Gabrielle Levy January 19 2017 Tiffany Trump Steve Bannon Steven Mnuchin Registered to Vote in Multiple States U S News amp World Report Ellen L Weintraub February 10 2017 Statement of Commissioner Ellen L Weintraub Regarding Allegations by the President of the United States of Widespread Voter Fraud in New Hampshire PDF Washington Federal Election Commission FEC Archived from the original PDF on February 11 2017 Retrieved February 12 2017 Eli Watkins February 10 2017 FEC commissioner asks Trump for voter fraud evidence Washington CNN Retrieved February 12 2017 a b Nelson Louis May 11 2017 Trump signs executive order creating voter fraud commission Politico Retrieved July 9 2017 Immigration hardliner says Trump team preparing plans for wall mulling Muslim registry Reuters November 16 2016 Retrieved February 14 2017 Trump s immigration whisperer Politico Retrieved February 14 2017 Stephen Miller s bushels of Pinocchios for false voter fraud claims The Washington Post Retrieved February 14 2017 Dick Morris There s proof that over 1 million people voted twice in 2012 politifact Retrieved February 14 2017 Kobach warns that noncitizens could tip election Kansas Retrieved February 14 2017 Kris Kobach agrees with Donald Trump that millions voted illegally but offers no evidence kansascity Retrieved February 14 2017 The conservative gladiator from Kansas behind restrictive voting laws The Washington Post Retrieved February 14 2017 Trump s voter fraud commission itself is a fraud The Washington Post July 18 2017 Retrieved July 19 2017 In fact the real fraud is the commission itself Miles Rapoport on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation John F Kennedy School of Government Harvard University May 30 2017 President Trump s decision to establish a panel to study voter fraud and suppression the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity has been roundly criticized by voter rights advocates and Democrats Miles Rapoport Senior Democracy Practice Fellow Ash Center There are a number of really serious problems with the Commission as it has been announced and conceptualized which have led many people to say that its conclusions are pre determined and that it will be used as an excuse for new efforts to restrict access to voting Michael Waldman Donald Trump Tells His Voter Fraud Panel Find Me Something Brennan Center for Justice New York University School of Law July 20 2017 also republished at The Daily Beast The panel was created to justify one of the more outlandish presidential fibs After Trump was roundly mocked for his claim of 3 to 5 million illegal voters the panel was launched in an effort to try to rustle up some evidence any evidence for the charge The purpose of the panel is not just to try to justify his laughable claims of millions of invisible illegal voters It aims to stir fears to lay the ground for new efforts to restrict voting Trump s claims after all are just a cartoon version of the groundless arguments already used to justify restrictive voting laws Mark Berman amp David Weigel Trump s voting commission asked states to hand over election data Some are pushing back Washington Post June 30 2017 Experts described the request as a recipe for potential voter suppression This is an attempt on a grand scale to purport to match voter rolls with other information in an apparent effort to try and show that the voter rolls are inaccurate and use that as a pretext to pass legislation that will make it harder for people to register to vote said Rick Hasen an election law expert at the University of California Irvine Hasen said he has no confidence in whatever results the committee produces He said the commission and its request create a number of concerns including that it is an election group created by one candidate for office Trump who already is campaigning for reelection and headed by Pence another political candidate It s just a recipe for a biased and unfair report Hasen said And it s completely different from the way that every other post election commission has been done Max Greenwood Newspapers rip Trump voter fraud panel in July Fourth editorials The Hill July 4 2017 a b Michael Tackett amp Michael Wines Trump Disbands Commission on Voter Fraud New York Times January 3 2018 a b Marina Villeneuve Report Trump commission did not find widespread voter fraud Associated Press August 3 2018 Bertrand Natasha Samuelsohn Darren What if Trump won t accept 2020 defeat Politico Retrieved April 10 2021 Gessen Masha What Could Happen If Donald Trump Rejects Electoral Defeat The New Yorker Retrieved April 10 2021 Trump s false claims of rigged voting are a perilous thing says top Republican expert Yahoo news Retrieved April 10 2021 US election Trump won t commit to peaceful transfer of power BBC News September 24 2020 Retrieved April 10 2021 Choi Matthew Trump declines to commit to a peaceful transition of power after election Politico Retrieved April 10 2021 Kiely Eugene Rieder Rem September 25 2020 Trump s Repeated False Attacks on Mail In Ballots FactCheck org Retrieved April 10 2021 Here s the reality behind Trump s claims about mail voting Associated Press September 30 2020 Retrieved April 10 2021 Ignoring FBI And Fellow Republicans Trump Continues Assault On Mail In Voting NPR Retrieved April 10 2021 Chris Cillizza Analysis The FBI director just totally shut down Donald Trump s vote fraud conspiracy CNN Retrieved April 10 2021 Steinhauser Paul November 7 2020 Biden wins presidency Trump denied second term in White House Fox News projects Fox News Retrieved April 10 2021 Stephen Collinson Maeve Reston Biden defeats Trump in an election he made about character of the nation and the President CNN Retrieved April 10 2021 Baragona Justin December 14 2020 Newsmax Finally Admits Joe Biden Won the Election The Daily Beast Retrieved April 10 2021 Biden defeats Trump for White House says time to heal Associated Press November 7 2020 Retrieved April 10 2021 King Ledyard Fritze John November 7 2020 Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani says Trump won t concede revives baseless claims of voter fraud USA Today Retrieved April 10 2021 Davis Tina November 7 2020 Trump s Election Lawsuits Where the Fights Are Playing Out Bloomberg Law Retrieved November 10 2020 Rubin Jennifer Opinion Republicans are still pretending there was election fraud The Washington Post Retrieved April 10 2021 Saletan William December 18 2020 Republicans Are Manufacturing a Legitimacy Crisis Slate Retrieved April 10 2021 Wines Michael February 27 2021 In Statehouses Stolen Election Myth Fuels a G O P Drive to Rewrite Rules The New York Times a href Template Cite news html title Template Cite news cite news a CS1 maint url status link Hannah Knowles Paulina Villegas May 15 2021 Man charged with wife s murder illegally cast her ballot for Trump officials say I just thought give him another vote The Washington Post Retrieved May 16 2021 Vinny Vella April 30 2021 A Delaware County man admitted he cast an illegal ballot for ex President Trump and gets sentenced to probation The Philadelphia Inquirer Retrieved May 16 2021 Amy B Wang October 22 2021 Nevada Republican who claimed someone stole dead wife s ballot is charged with voter fraud The Washington Post Blankley Bethany AG Paxton More than 500 election fraud cases pending in Texas courts The Center Square Retrieved June 21 2022 Sources EditRobinson Julie A June 18 2018 Findings of fact and conclusions of law in Fish v Kobach Case No 16 2105 JAR JPO and Bednasek and Kobach Case No 15 9300 JAR JPO published 2018 06 18 with corrections 2018 06 19 PDF US District Court for the District of Kansas Retrieved June 28 2018 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Voter impersonation in the United States amp oldid 1128150871, 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