Some of those in the fraudulent fraud squad like to call those, like me, who (correctly) argue that impersonation voter fraud is virtually nonexistent “vote fraud deniers.” Here’s an example of the language in a new John Fund column.
As I make clear in The Voting Wars, election crimes (including voter fraud) happen. It is a relatively small problem relative to the number of votes cast. When it happens, it tends to involve absentee ballot fraud, and sometimes other things like election officials cooking the books and, as John Fund’s column notes, double voting in two states. (This is one of the reasons I favor federal voter administration with a national id card and unique voter i.d. number to prevent double voting between states.)
The primary kind of fraud which a state voter id law would prevent is voter impersonation fraud, and that, as I’ve explained ad nauseam, is really a non-problem. Making this claim doesn’t make me a “vote fraud denier.” It makes me a denier of the possibility of significant in person voter fraud.
How rare is it? We’ve been down this road before, but here’s a nice graphic from News21, which did a comprehensive survey of district attorneys across the country over the last 10 years, finding 491 cases of absentee ballot prosecutions and 10 cases of impersonation fraud, none connected to the other. Check out this graphic from News 21 (look at the way down to find impersonation fraud):