Voter Fraud Again Proves to be Rare
Even when it is focused on.
![[Voter Fraud Graphic]](https://otb.cachefly.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Voter-Fraud-570x321.png)
Yet again the evidence demonstrates that voter fraud is exceedingly rare in the United States, even when millions of dollars are devoted to finding it. Via WaPo: GOP voter-fraud crackdown overwhelmingly targets minorities, Democrats.
Of the 115 cases that have been resolved as of mid-December, 42 ended in dismissal, acquittal or dropped charges — nearly the same as the number of guilty verdicts.
All of the convictions occurred in Florida, Texas and Ohio, while units in Virginia, Georgia and Arkansas failed to obtain a single guilty verdict, despite allocating dozens of staffers and millions of dollars to ferret out voter fraud.
[…]
Paxton’s office spent nearly $6.7 million on its unit over the last three years and resolved 33 cases — roughly $203,000 a case, according to an analysis of state figures by The Washington Post. Florida’s unit has a budget of $1.2 million in fiscal year 2022-2023 and made 52 arrests, a cost of about $23,000 an arrest. Florida lawmakers boosted the unit’s budget to $1.4 million earlier this year.
[…]
“This is a hammer in search of a nail,” Sweren-Becker said.
Indeed.
And I have to wonder about the wisdom of those expenditures. At a bare minimum, this is not fiscally conservative, because it is not an efficient (nor efficacious) expenditure of public monies.
The bottom line remains (as I have discussed before), that there is simply no evidence of widespread fraud and the evidence even for micro-level fraud is minuscule in the grand scheme of things. Even when attention, and dollars, are focused on finding fraud, nothing of substance is found. Indeed, the amount of illegality in this arena is remarkably small given the number of elections held in the US and the commensurate number of ballots cast. This is even more astonishing when we see that a given chunk of the illegality is attributable to error not corrupt intent.
Anyone who is asserting that there is massive electoral fraud in the US is either utterly deluded or purposefully dishonest. The evidence is quite clear and available for assessment for anyone who wishes to see it.
But…but…but… I’ve this shiny hammer, there must be a nail somewhere!
While simultaneously 9 Republican led States withdrew from the Electronic Registration Information Center program that is a check against registering to vote in multiple States.
I know it is anecdotal, but the voter fraud cases that I have read about involved Trump voters, including a guy in Florida who cast his dead mother’s absentee ballot for Trump saying, “I know she would have voted for Trump.” If Republicans put the same effort into good governance that they do in trying to prevent Dems and minorities from voting we’d have a better country.
It’s not simply rare, it’s also fairly simple to detect. Anyone who argues otherwise doesn’t understand how voting jurisdictions work.
As with Charley in Cleveland, most of the cases I’ve read about (where the party is mentioned) involve Republicans.
@Jen: Per the article, the significant majority of those charged are Dems or whose affiliations are difficult to determine. I had quickly read the article this morning and came away without knowing how many of the convictions were Repubs, Dems or Undetermineds
I see the flaw in your statement.
The GQP Fraud Squads should do as children know, and pursue imaginary crimes with imaginary arrests and imaginary trials. This would let them fill up their prisons with imaginary criminals.
With a person in general, I put more weight on “deluded”. You know, never mistake incompetence for malevolence…
In the case of Ken Paxton though, he’s done a lot of work to prove me wrong.