Myth Versus Reality
The Mainstream Corporate Media has devoted several news stories to allegations of potential voter fraud specifically implicating ACORN, a grass roots community organization that encourages people to register to vote (among other things). More recently, there have been news stories about the long, long lines in some places (Florida, Ohio, and Indiana) for early voting. I'll get to that later.
The media successfully conflated fraudulent voter registration as voter fraud while making cursory mentions of voter suppression. Here are some of the myths and realities surrounding voter fraud and voter suppression.
MYTH: ACORN, with the help of the Obama campaign, has registered thousands (if not millions) of fraudulent voters.
REALITY: ACORN only submits the registrations they get from their volunteers to the fifty Secretaries of State. Each Secretary of State office in all fifty states registers voters, not ACORN. Furthermore, ACORN actually flags potentially fraudulent voter registration forms when they submit them, alerting the agencies to investigate them before adding them to the voter rolls.
MYTH: Voter fraud is rampant, especially in areas where there are large Democratic political machines such as Chicago and Philadelphia.
REALITY: Evidence of voter fraud in present day elections is scant at best. In Crawford v. Marion County (Indiana) Election Board (2008), Justice David Souter argues in his dissent upholding Indiana's Voter ID law, "[E]ven in the State's interest in deterring a voter from showing up at the polls and claiming to be someone he is not must, in turn, be discounted for the fact that the State has not come up with a single case of in-person voter impersonation fraud in all of Indiana's history." (emphasis mine)
REALITY: While there is little to no evidence that voter fraud exists, there is ample evidence that voter suppression exists and has existed in the past. There are Constitutional Amendments prohibiting voter suppression. Also, election boards all over the country have limited the amount of voting machines in precincts where there is heavy voter turnout and the strong possibility that those places will vote heavily in favor of one candidate over another. This occurred in Ohio in 2004, where precincts in Cleveland and Columbus had only two functional voting machines in heavily populated precincts (resulting in eight to ten hour waiting times) while sparsely populated precincts in Ohio had as many as twenty viable machines available (Google 'Rolling Stone Ohio 2004' for more information). This more recently occurred in Indiana, Ohio, Georgia, and Florida where early voting polling places saw lines of voters waiting as much as six hours to vote early. Rachel Maddow this Sunday on MSNBC makes a salient argument about how this and what we may see on Tuesday acts as a violation of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment.
I hope you have voted already (if you have early voting where you live). If not, please do so on Tuesday.
The media successfully conflated fraudulent voter registration as voter fraud while making cursory mentions of voter suppression. Here are some of the myths and realities surrounding voter fraud and voter suppression.
MYTH: ACORN, with the help of the Obama campaign, has registered thousands (if not millions) of fraudulent voters.
REALITY: ACORN only submits the registrations they get from their volunteers to the fifty Secretaries of State. Each Secretary of State office in all fifty states registers voters, not ACORN. Furthermore, ACORN actually flags potentially fraudulent voter registration forms when they submit them, alerting the agencies to investigate them before adding them to the voter rolls.
MYTH: Voter fraud is rampant, especially in areas where there are large Democratic political machines such as Chicago and Philadelphia.
REALITY: Evidence of voter fraud in present day elections is scant at best. In Crawford v. Marion County (Indiana) Election Board (2008), Justice David Souter argues in his dissent upholding Indiana's Voter ID law, "[E]ven in the State's interest in deterring a voter from showing up at the polls and claiming to be someone he is not must, in turn, be discounted for the fact that the State has not come up with a single case of in-person voter impersonation fraud in all of Indiana's history." (emphasis mine)
REALITY: While there is little to no evidence that voter fraud exists, there is ample evidence that voter suppression exists and has existed in the past. There are Constitutional Amendments prohibiting voter suppression. Also, election boards all over the country have limited the amount of voting machines in precincts where there is heavy voter turnout and the strong possibility that those places will vote heavily in favor of one candidate over another. This occurred in Ohio in 2004, where precincts in Cleveland and Columbus had only two functional voting machines in heavily populated precincts (resulting in eight to ten hour waiting times) while sparsely populated precincts in Ohio had as many as twenty viable machines available (Google 'Rolling Stone Ohio 2004' for more information). This more recently occurred in Indiana, Ohio, Georgia, and Florida where early voting polling places saw lines of voters waiting as much as six hours to vote early. Rachel Maddow this Sunday on MSNBC makes a salient argument about how this and what we may see on Tuesday acts as a violation of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment.
I hope you have voted already (if you have early voting where you live). If not, please do so on Tuesday.
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