Voting Matters - Project Vote's Blog

The Myth of “Voter Fraud” Drives Systemic Efforts to Suppress the Vote
By: Erin Ferns - September 26, 2008
Weekly Voting Rights News Update

"I think the days of ballot box stuffing are more or less gone." - Allen Raymond, former GOP operative

Voter fraud by individuals has been a major partisan debate in recent elections, inspiring multiple states to
consider or pass laws that purport to stop it, including "no-match, no-vote" list maintenance procedures
and strict voter ID  requirements. Despite federal findings that the act of casting an illegal ballot is
exceedingly rare, partisans often cite large scale voter registration drives as voter fraud culprits, and
perpetuate the myth of voter fraud by spreading the fear that such votes cancel out legitimate ones. With
rising registration rates - particularly among historically underrepresented Americans - it is no surprise
that partisans are spreading this myth, and the media often perpetuates the hysteria by printing stories on
the small numbers of bad registration cards submitted by large scale voter registration drives (including
the 1.2 million submitted by Project Vote voter registration partner, ACORN).

Despite the constant trickle of "voter fraud" scares in the media, however, it is becoming more evident
that elections are more often compromised by systematic efforts to suppress eligible voters, including the
very measures that are meant to protect against the extremely rare instances of ineligible voters
attempting to cast a ballot. The real enemy to fair elections are organized voter suppression efforts that
are seen in these poorly devised election laws, partisan dirty tricks, and systematic partisan efforts to
challenge legitimate voters. From the alleged plan to challenge foreclosure victims in Michigan and Ohio
to the potential "no-match, no-vote" fiascoes in Wisconsin and Florida, many Americans have cause to
wonder, "will my vote count in November?"

On Monday, September 22, KCRW's To the Point host, Warren Olney, discussed voter fraud and voter
suppression in the 2008 presidential election with Project Vote Executive Director Michael Slater, Doug
Chapin of the Pew Center, former GOP strategist Allen Raymond, and Wall Street Journal columnist,
John Fund.

In "major states like Ohio, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania" this year, Slater warned that we can
expect some "election administration problems," which run the gamut from logistical issues, such as
poorly distributed voting machines, to voter suppression tactics, including voter caging, which historically
affect low income and minority communities. These communities, which have historically been
systematically shut out of the electoral process, have shown signs of increased political interest and
higher registration rates they year, prompting fears of increased partisan efforts to suppress this tidal
wave of new voters.

Fund repeated stories of small numbers of allegedly invalid voter registration cards being submitted out of
the more than 1.2 million turned in this year by Project Vote voter registration partner, ACORN, and said
"some of these voter registration efforts have been questionable." But former GOP operative Allen
Raymond, explained that there was a critical difference between a "systematic" voter suppression
program "versus one that is part of the process." For one, he said, systematic efforts, like voter caging,
are far more detrimental to election integrity than voter registration drive employees submitting bad
applications.

Raymond was dismissive of the allegations against voter registration drives. "Look, those are a couple of
people who are just trying to earn a buck, collecting signatures. I've seen it all the time on ballot access
petition efforts," he said of the voter registration fraud allegations. "I think the days of ballot box stuffing
are more or less gone...and so I think what you really need to address are those systematic efforts," said
Raymond.

Election Dirty Tricks

Raymond knows all about partisan use of systemic voter suppression efforts; he has written a book
entitled How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative, which describes his years as a
dirty-tricks specialist for the GOP. Raymond served time for a 2002 Republican phone jamming scheme.
In a September 15 interview with the Michigan Messenger Raymond said "holding down Democratic
turnout is a key part of Republican strategy for victory in November." Asked about reports of Republican
attempts to challenge the voting rights of foreclosure victims, Raymond said that if he were still in the
dirty-tricks business he "would be doing that all day long."

Other stories that have surfaced in recent weeks contribute to fears that partisans are ramping up their
voter suppression machines. Last week, a mailer from the Republican National Committee that went to
multiple registered Democrats in Florida left many confused about their party affiliation, according to Pam
Fessler of NPR. While some Democratic officials consider the mailer an attempt to challenge voters
based on returned mail, particularly Democratic senior citizens, Republican officials claim the confusion
was not intentional and denied allegations of voter caging, according to the Naples Daily News on
Sunday.

But in recent weeks several media and Internet outlets, including Air America, have reported on accounts
of massive mailings of absentee ballot applications from the McCain campaign sent to registered
Democrats and Obama supporters in other battleground states as well, including  Wisconsin, Virginia,
Pennsylvania, and New Jersey; many of the mailings appear to contain the wrong preprinted return
addresses for ballots, which would direct them to the wrong precinct.

Of even greater concern than dirty tricks is the possibility of voter suppression through election
administration problems that are expected to run the gamut in key states.

No-Match, No-Vote

Voter advocates claim thousands of Wisconsin voters may "lose their right to vote" as a result of a lawsuit
filed by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen just six weeks before the election.   Van Hollen, who sued the
Government Accountability Board - which oversees elections in the state -  to "seek an order requiring the
board to compare voter information to the Department of Transportation records for more voters," is being
scrutinized for his ties to the McCain campaign (he is the campaign's co-chair in Wisconsin), according to
the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Van Hollen hopes to quickly implement a notoriously faulty voter list maintenance system known as "no-
match, no-vote," which experts say could result in purging eligible voters from the Wisconsin registration
rolls. This system was found to incorrectly fail 22 percent of voters during an initial test in August
(additionally, four out of six judges on the G.A.B. also failed to match the system). Under "no-match, no-
vote", voters could mistakenly lose their registration as a result of "transposed digits, variations in names
("Becky" instead of "Rebecca," for instance) or poor handwriting on voter registration forms," the Journal-
Sentinel reports. "Apt to fail are people with apostrophes, hyphens or spaces in their names. Voter
records usually drop punctuation and spaces - 'ONeil' instead of 'O'Neil' - while driver's license records
often keep them."

A similar practice is being enforced in Florida that could "turn Election Day 2008 in Florida into a
catastrophe akin to the hanging-chads debacle of 2000," Florida Today editorialized this week. "With no
time for troubleshooting the system, that could falsely disenfranchise many who've done nothing wrong."
The state's dormant  2005 "no-match, no-vote" law was revived by Republican Secretary of State Kurt
Browning in early September after challenges failed in court. Browning's decision to enforce this practice
caused a critical uproar from voting rights activists, who claim such a move could disenfranchise
thousands of Floridians, according to a Miami Herald report earlier this month.

"No-match, no-vote laws" are sold to the public as a way to prevent fraudulent voting, but as Florida
Today correctly notes; "few people try to vote under someone else's name. A five-year hunt for voter
fraud by the Justice Department under the Bush administration found almost no evidence of organized
efforts to tilt national elections."

The Elections Supervisor of Leon County, Florida, Ion Ian Sancho, is quoted in the Florida Today piece as
saying that the real problem is not potential fraud by voters but partisan manipulation of the process.
Sancho has been vocal about his opposition to the Florida laws he is required to enforce, including how
the state makes eligible voters vulnerable to partisan challenges. Speaking on WGCU radio in Florida on
September 12, Sancho told host Sasha Rethati that in the past ten years the Florida legislature had
written rules to "make sure that the party in power could stay in power." He pointed to a 2005 Florida law
that stripped the state's voters of the right to contest challenges at the polls, and how challengers now
only needed to express a "good faith belief" that a voter is ineligible to force the voter to file a provisional
ballot. "You can supply a list containing 10,000 names to the supervisor of elections," said Sancho, "and I
have to make all 10,000 members vote by provisional ballot."

"What we have here is partisans attempting to use anything they can possibly find to gain an advantage
on the other party," said Sancho. "Quite frankly, I'm fed up with it as an election official. The reason I
came into this field was to make sure Americans had the right to vote, and to have their votes counted
properly."

Quick Links:

Minnite, Lorraine. The Politics of Voter Fraud. Project Vote. March 2007.