Voter Fraud and Voter Intimidation

It must be close to the election. Around election time, particularly close elections, Republicans and their supporters start making claims of vote fraud. These claims typically involve voting in urban areas. See, for example, John Fund's new book, Stealing Elections.

Democrats and their supporters claim that there will be voter intimidation, particularly suppression of the black vote. (A belief among some core Democrats in Florida is that the Black vote was deliberately suppressed there in 2000, though I think that this remains a controversial claim.) As I noted Saturday, John Kerry made such allegations in a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Today, we see two more examples of the argument, Bob Hebert's New York Times column, Protect the Vote, and Jeffrey Toobin's New Yorker article, Poll Position: Is the Justice Department poised to stop voter fraud—or to keep voters from voting?

Though these allegations are often made on both sides, they are very difficult to prove. It will be up to the media to check both sorts of claims carefully on election day.

Posted by Rick Hasen at September 13, 2004 08:40 AM