The Myth of Voter Fraud

Earlier this month, Republicans in Ohio lost their lawsuit challenging a state rule that allows voters to register and vote early on the same day. But the state party had no intention of conceding the point. GOP officials demanded records from all 88 county boards of election identifying every person who took advantage of same-day registration and voting. In one county, the Republican district attorney even opened a grand jury investigation.

"He's investigating people who the law says are allowed to vote," said Ohio ACLU lawyer Carrie Davis. After it was revealed that the district attorney was also the local chairman of the McCain campaign, he was forced to appoint a special prosecutor to handle the case.

There's no indication that any of these voters did anything illegal. But the attempt to investigate voters who took advantage of a state rule designed to encourage voter participation exemplifies the kinds of attacks on new voters that are going on across the country.

Even when the challenges fail, Republican officials persist in their claims of voter fraud in what appears to be an effort to lay the groundwork for challenging the outcome of Election Day. In about a dozen interviews, legal scholars and voting experts say this broad-based attack could lead to serious and continuing challenges to the legitimacy of the next president.

"(Republicans are) trying to do what they can to poison the well on the eve of the election because they're not winning on the issues," contends Charles Lichtman, statewide lead counsel for the Florida Democratic Party. The party, like the Obama campaign, is assembling a team of volunteer lawyers to take on unwarranted challenges and obstruction to voters on Election Day. "They know there are more Democrats registered than Republicans," said Lichtman, "so they're calling out fraud where it didn't occur."

For months now, Republicans have been claiming that voter fraud is rampant and that government officials aren't sufficiently cracking down. Democrats insist that voter fraud is practically nonexistent -- the real problem is intimidation and harassment of voters at the polls, they say.

Voting-rights experts tend to agree with the Democrats. A study by the Brennan Center for Justice, for example, found that, "It's more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls."

Another study, by Barnard College political scientist Lori Minnite, similarly concluded that voter fraud is "extremely rare." The Brennan Center also showed that the sort of strict rules advocated by Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere would disenfranchise thousands of people -- usually the poor, elderly and minorities.

Even the most rigorous studies, however, haven't made the issue any less of a political football. Republicans like Cleta Mitchell, an election lawyer who chairs the Republican National Lawyers Assn., says such experts are just part of "the professional vote-fraud deniers industry," insisting that voting fraud exists even if it's nearly impossible to prove.

"If you just deny it," Mitchell said, "then that means that anyone who wants to take any steps to protect the integrity of the process can only be doing that because they're a racist."

In fact, even official Justice Dept. policy had acknowledged until recently that individual voter fraud has "only a minimal impact on the integrity of the voting process" and therefore usually wasn't worth trying to prosecute. Then last year, the Bush administration changed that to allow individual prosecutors to pursue such cases at their discretion.

When some U.S. attorneys refused because of a lack of evidence, several were fired, contributing to the scandal that ultimately forced the resignation of Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales. Since then, Democrats have become even more vigilant in fighting back against claims of voter fraud.