Voting fraud is rare in America. All reputable studies confirm this. So we’re speaking in relative terms. Most people, whether Democrats or Republicans, don’t vote on other people’s ballots, vote more than once, etc. But, though rare, it does occasionally happen. This article examines the possible motives.
First, let’s look at some examples to provide a context.
This month a Wisconsin voting fraud prosecution got quite a bit of national press. Robert Monroe, 50, a health insurance executive, has been charged with 13 felonies for casting multiple votes under his, his son’s, and his girlfriend’s son’s names. According to the charging documents, he voted twice in the 2012 presidential election, once in Wisconsin (where he maintains his primary residence) and once in Indiana (where he owns a vacation home). He also allegedly voted 5 times in the Walker recall election and cast multiple ballots in judicial and legislative races. He doesn’t appear to have been put up to it by anyone. Rather, he’s a guy with strong political opinions who badly wants his side to win. He’s a very conservative Republican, and those folks can get quite passionate about politics and issues.
In 2013, a Virginia man named Adam Ward, 28, pleaded guilty to 36 counts of voting fraud for turning in hundreds of fake petition signatures to get Newt Gingrich on Virginia’s 2012 GOP presidential primary ballot. While these weren’t fraudulent votes cast to elect a candidate to office, forging signatures to qualify a candidate or initiative for the ballot is a form of election fraud.
Harking back to Washington’s disputed 2004 governor’s election, more than 1,000 ineligible ex-felons voted, and no one knows who they voted for. (This wasn’t a case of voting fraud, but of mistake; at the time, state law on the voting rights of ex-convicts was so muddled and confusing even parole officers, county auditors, and the secretary of state didn’t understand it, and these people were told they could vote.) When the Republican candidate, who lost the final recount, contested the election in court he couldn’t prove these ballots changed the election outcome because there was no way to isolate them, so his lawyers used data from other states to argue that on a statistical basis ex-felons are more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. After hearing arguments from the lawyers over the sampling methods used, the judge didn’t buy it, and refused to set aside the recount result. Meanwhile a local newspaper, as I recall the Tacoma News Tribune, tested the GOP’s theory by conducting its own unscientific survey of ex-felon voters. It found 10 willing to talk to them, 9 men and 1 woman, and it turned out the 9 men voted Republican and the woman voted Democratic. If one extrapolates this anecdotal and unscientific evidence, then 90% of the ex-felon votes in that election went to the Republican candidate.
In the 2012 election, an Oregon election worker was caught filling in blank ballot spaces with votes for Republican candidates. Ballot spaces left blank by voters legally are non-votes that don’t count for any candidate. What this worker did was vote other people’s ballots, and vote multiple times, both of which are felonies in Oregon. If anyone but the voter marks a ballot, whether it’s a spouse or boyfriend or election worker, that’s voting fraud and is illegal, unless done at the direction of the voter in the manner prescribed by law. No one is permitted to vote any ballot except their own, or vote more than once for any candidate or issue.
People seem to generally respect these laws; I’ve already noted that violations are very rare. Why would someone vote twice, or vote someone else’s ballot? I don’t the parties or outside groups put them up to this. I believe it’s mostly attributable to individuals getting carried away by their political passions. This behavior is impulsive, not calculated. When you read about this or that group messing with petition signatures or voter registrations, if you dig into it, it’s almost always a training issue or a couple of rogue workers. In other words, nearly all election law violations are caused by ignorance or passion.
I’m not contending Democrats never do it, but my focus here is on Republicans. They have different worldview. First, they’re less committed to democracy and majority rule; this isn’t just me talking, even Nobel-laureate economist Paul Krugman commented about it in his New York Times column last week. Second, very conservative people possess immense certitude in the rightness of their beliefs; they’re notoriously inflexible and closed-minded, and it’s incomprehensible to them that they could be wrong or the other side could be right. This mental attitude naturally inclines them to feel they must do what’s necessary to “save the country” and prevent the “wrong” people from winning elections, and in their minds the means justify the ends.
So, Robert Monroe probably didn’t see anything wrong with what he did. How can helping Scott Walker and other Republicans be wrong? By helping them win, he was setting things right, and keeping them right. Even more than that, all the dishonest Republicans I’ve ever known thought they were doing God’s work, and if something was wrong about how they did it, that wasn’t a problem because they already have their Jesus-issued Get Out Of Jail Free card. Under their religious credo, once you’ve been saved, anything goes.
So how do we deal with people who think they own a monopoly on truth and right thinking, believe they can do no wrong, and are on a divine mission to save the world from Democrats? The most important thing you can do is vote, and not let anything or anyone keep you from voting. Collectively, we must watch these people carefully, because anyone who thinks they can do no wrong is wrongdoing waiting for an opportunity to happen. What I’ve developed here is a thesis that the Republican way of thinking about the world removes normal self-restraint and impels them to replace rule of the majority with rule of the “right thinkers.” Within this worldview, achieving such end may well in their thinking justify any means, no matter how illegal or unscrupulous.
