In light of the O’Keefe circus, which no doubt will produce more hapless staffers apparently going along with O’Keefe operatives’ suggestions of fake crimes, I thought this quick reminder/primer would be in order (much more detail on all of this in The Voting Wars):

Here’s what we know about in-person, impersonation fraud.  Almost all the fraud that occurs in relation to election falls into three categories: election crimes committed by election officials (Cudahy is a recent colorful example), voter registration fraud (a la ACORN workers and now apparently Sproul workers—though there is still an investigation of those), and absentee ballot fraud. This usually occurs through vote buying and there are examples of such fraud in every election.  See Adam Liptak’s recent piece.  The Justice Dept. under Bush spent five years going after election crimes and voter fraud, and almost all the cases it found (I believe it was reported first as 86 and then as 120) fell into these categories.  There were no cases of in person, impersonation fraud—the primary type of fraud which a state voter id law can prevent.

For my book, I tried to find a single example of impersonation fraud at the polls, done without the cooperation of election officials (because a voter id law would not prevent that), in the last generation, where the results could arguably have been called into question by such fraud.  I could not find one.  Nor can those who tout the voter fraud claims find one.  Von Spakovsky pointed to what he called “extensive impersonation fraud” in a Heritage report (and related FOX News oped) based upon a 1984 grand jury report from Brooklyn.  He stonewalled on giving me the report and when UCI librarians tracked it down it did not support his claim: the crimes were almost all by election officials and party officials.  (Note that crimes committed in the 1970s are particularly relevant to what is going on today in any case….).

News21 did a recent comprehensive study of all reports by prosecutors of election crimes since 2000.  They found only 10 prosecutions for impersonation fraud across the country (leading to what looks like 7 convictions), with none of them tied to any kind of conspiracy to steal the vote.  This compares to 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud and 400 cases of registration fraud.  There is no reason to believe that impersonation fraud would be harder to detect than these other kinds of fraud.  Instead, because it would involve a conspiracy among a number of individuals going to the polls and claiming to be someone else listed on the polls (someone out of the area, or dead, or false registered—though we don’t see case of that), it should be easier to detect.  The reason this kind of fraud doesn’t happen except in very rare circumstances is that it is an exceedingly dumb way to steal an election.  Election official fraud and absentee ballot fraud are easier and therefore more prevalent.

There are cases of double voting across states, but state id laws are not the best way to catch that.  The best way is with a national id, which is something I’d support if it were coupled with universal voter registration done by the federal government.

I’ve written too about how it is very hard for plaintiffs in the voter id challenges (putting aside Pa., which did not have its act together in time) to find real eligible voters who (1) lack id; (2) would have trouble getting the id; and (3) want to vote.  There are some, and the question is one of cost and benefits: state voter id laws inconvenience a lot of people without much anti-fraud payoff.  And compare that to cutting back on absentee ballots to prevent that kind of fraud.   As I recently wrote:

Recently, officials in Cudahy, Calif., admitted intercepting absentee ballots and throwing out ballots not cast for incumbents. Every year we see convictions for absentee ballot fraud. Not a lot, but enough to know it’s a problem.

So you might think that Republicans, newly obsessed with voter fraud, would call for eliminating absentee ballots, or at least requiring that voters who use them show some need, like a medical condition. But Republicans don’t talk much about reining in absentee ballots. Eliminating them would inconvenience some voters and would likely cut back on voting by loyal Republican voters, especially elderly and military voters.

If only Republicans would apply that same logic to voter-identification laws. The only kind of fraud such ID laws prevent is impersonation: a person registered under a false name or claiming to be someone else on the voter rolls.

I have not found a single election over the last few decades in which impersonation fraud had the slightest chance of changing an election outcome — unlike absentee-ballot fraud, which changes election outcomes regularly. (Let’s face it: impersonation fraud is an exceedingly dumb way to try to steal an election.)

Pointing to a few isolated cases of impersonation fraud does not prove that a state identification requirement makes sense. As with restrictions on absentee ballots, we need to weigh the costs of imposing barriers on the right to vote against the benefits of fraud protection.