From the Monkey Cage: Trump wants voter registration investigated. This is how 20 states are already doing it.

Here's a topic that bridges 2305 and 2306.

- Click here for the article.

In a Wednesday morning tweet, President Trump returned to his campaign refrain of widespread electoral problems and called for “an investigation into voter fraud, including those registered to vote in two states.”

Within hours, it was revealed that at least five people close to Trump — daughter Tiffany, son-in-law Jared Kushner, adviser Stephen K. Bannon, treasury nominee Steven Mnuchin and press secretary Sean Spicer — are registered to vote in more than one state.

They are not alone. A 2012 Pew Charitable Trusts report estimated that 2.75 million Americans were on the voter rolls in more than one state and that 1.8 million dead people remained on the rolls.

Like Trump’s family members and associates, these are people who registered to vote legally, but when they moved or passed away, their names were not deleted from voter lists.

It’s not illegal to be registered to vote in more than one state, but it is illegal to vote more than once. By holding more than one registration, a voter could conceivably drive across state lines to cast ballots in different places. Or a voter could request an absentee ballot in one state and vote in person in another state. Such scenarios, even if only a few instances have actually occurred, concern many Americans.

Whose responsibility is it to ensure that voter lists are accurate?

Is it the job of the voters? When they move and register in a new state, should they remember to contact the clerk’s office in their former state to cancel their registration? Should relatives or friends of a person who just passed away be charged with notifying the county clerk?

Some diligent Americans do this. But most expect that the state will find out about a move or a death through government records. This is where the system breaks down.

From the Washington Post: FBI probes foreign hacks of state election systems

Photo ID is of no use in this case.

We might just want to go back to pen and paper.

- Click here for the article.

The FBI is investigating a series of suspected foreign hacks of state election computer systems and websites, and has warned states to be on the alert for potential intrusions.

The Aug. 18 warning, issued after two states suffered intrusions into their systems, comes amid heightened concern over Russian hacks of Democratic Party organizations and possible meddling in the presidential election.

The FBI “flash” alert, which is not intended for general public release, listed Internet protocol addresses and other technical fingerprints associated with the hacks.

“The FBI is requesting that states contact their Board of Elections and determine if any similar activity to their logs, both inbound and outbound, has been detected,” said the FBI alert, which was first reported by Yahoo News.

The warning did not name the states that were targeted. But in June, the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office shut down part of its website after the FBI found a potential threat to its state voter registration system, according to the Arizona Republic.

And in July, the Illinois Voter Registration System suffered a cyber-intrusion in which hackers were able to retrieve voter records, according to a message from the Illinois State Board of Elections.

The intrusion led the state election board to shut down the voter registration system for a week.

“This was a highly sophisticated attack most likely from a foreign (international) entity,” said Kyle Thomas, the Illinois board’s director of voting and registration systems, in the message.

The FBI declined official comment other than to note it “routinely advises private industry of various cyber threat indicators” it turns up in investigations.

The FBI has told Illinois officials that they’re looking at possible foreign government agencies as well as criminal hackers, said Ken Menzel, general counsel for the Illinois elections board.

The system has long been targeted by hackers, he said. But this hack “is to our knowledge the first time anyone has gotten in,” he said. “It’s not for lack of trying.” He added: “We’re highly confident that nothing was added, deleted or altered.” The amount of voter data that was accessed was “a fairly small percentage of the total,” he said.

For more on the subject: How Electronic Voting Could Undermine the Election - As foreign hackers target election data, voters may lose faith in digital ballots.

From Oyez: Crawford v. Marion County Election Board

For 2306 - in 2008 the Supreme Court upheld Indiana's voter ID laws.

- Click here for the page.

The result:

By a vote of 6 to 3, the Court upheld the law, concluding that the photo I.D. requirement was closely related to Indiana's legitimate state interests in preventing voter fraud. The slight burden the law imposed on voters' rights did not outweigh these interests, which the Court characterized as "neutral and nondiscriminatory." Although there was no majority opinion, the Court's decision included concurring opinions written by Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia. Justices David Souter and Stephen Breyer each wrote dissenting opinions. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Justice Souter's dissent.

The court has yet to rule in Texas' voter ID laws, though they have allowed it to be used while the case proceeds.

- Supreme Court Allows Texas to Use Strict Voter ID Law in Coming Election.

From Politifact: Voter fraud occurs in Texas, though convictions and guilty pleas are rare

The organization claims that it is wrong to say that voter fraud does not occur - for consideration in 2306 when we look at voting in the state.

- Click here for the article.

. . . Trimble’s sources mostly referred to voter fraud -- deception committed by individual voters, such as voting more than once, impersonating a voter or voting despite ineligibility -- rather than overall election fraud, which encompasses actions by others, such as election officials or campaign workers, who break election laws in ways that could include intimidating voters, publishing misinformation about polling places or possessing ballots not their own.

We dipped into that distinction in an April 2012 fact-check that rated as Half True a claim from Abbott that he had secured 50 convictions for election fraud. Abbott’s basis was his office’s records on 2002-12 prosecutions for alleged election code violations.

For this fact-check, we asked Abbott’s office for an updated list. County district attorneys and the Texas secretary of state’s elections division usually refer allegations of election code violations to the attorney general. We also called the secretary’s office and several district attorney offices around the state, but found no specific information about how many violations were reported or prosecuted.

Abbott spokeswoman Lauren Bean emailed us records showing that from August 2002 through September 2012, the office received 616 allegations of election-code violations and recorded 78 election-code prosecutions.

By our count, 46 of the prosecutions ended with a conviction, guilty plea, no-contest plea or guilty plea as part of deferred adjudication. Of those, 18 cases appeared to involve fraud committed by individual voters: 12 cases with ineligible voters, five cases of voter impersonation and one case of voting more than once.

So, by our reading of the attorney general’s records, 18 instances of voter fraud have been confirmed in Texas since 2002.

How much voter fraud exists in the U.S. and in Texas?

An underlying issue in the previous post is whether voter fraud is a serious issue in the nation - or at least whether it is rampant. What do we know how about how much voter fraud exist in the nation and what type of fraud exists?


Here are a few random items on the question - I don't intend to get too bogged down in it, but it's worth a quick discussion in both 2305 and 2306.



- Ballotpedia: Voter Fraud.

- U.S. New and World Report: Is Voter Fraud a Real Problem?

- RNLA: Vote Fraud News.

- Politifact: Light a match to Greg Abbott's ridiculous claim about 'rampant voter fraud'

- National Review: Voter Fraud: We’ve Got Proof It’s Easy.- Mother Jones: 9 Facts That Blow Up the Voter Fraud Myth.

Absentee Ballots Sent

The election has officially begun in Texas. County clerks have been sending out absentee ballots to those eligible to receive them: Military and overseas voters, as well as the elderly, disabled, and those who will be out of town on voting day.

Here's a guide to absentee voting, and additional information from the Texas Secretary of State's office.

Ballots can be requested until October 30.

Ballotpedia has background on absentee ballot voter fraud, with special attention paid to Texas - of course.

9 - Written Assignment GOVT 2305 #9

Voter ID Laws - those that have photo requirements - are based on the premise that there's lots of voter fraud out there, so much so that the possibility that some eligible voters may be denied the ability to vote is out weighed by the need to ensure that those who are not eligible do not vote.

But is the premise true?

I want you to research this and try to get a handle on whether there is in fact a lot of verified voter fraud in Texas and the US in general. If so, what type of fraud is there? Are photo ID requirements the best way to combat that fraud? What other options are there? Be sure to cite your sources. How do we know that there is in fact rampant voter fraud in the country?

The latest crop of articles on Voter ID

Fuel for the fire:

- A panel of federal judges is reviewing Texas' Voter ID law to see if it violates the Voting Rights Act. The law is argued to have a disparate impact on the ability of minorities to vote.

- Politifact says that Greg Abbott's claim that there have been 50 election fraud convictions in Texas is half true, many were not actually convictions, but were granted deferred adjudication.

- The Texas Attorney General claims Voter ID is necessary to fight voter fraud and submitted a list of those accused. The US Justice Department argues there is little evidence of wide-spread, organized fraud.

- Are these laws simply a means of influencing the 2012 election by making it more difficult for groups that vote Democrat to vote than groups that vote Republican?

- The US Attorney General thinks Voter ID laws are a type of poll tax: "Holder charged that many voters would be forced to travel “great distances” to obtain a government-issued photo ID and that many minority voters would “struggle” to pay for the required paperwork. “We call these poll taxes"

- Politifact says it is mostly true that more African Americans than Whites lack government issued photo IDs.

- The Austin American Statesman reports that the bill passed last year requiring that voters show photo identification was rushed through the legislature and the debate over it was racially polarized.

Texas Voter ID Law Blocked by Justice Department

This applies to our discussion of federalism, as well as elections, and probably the executive branch and checks and balances as well. Citing the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department blocked implementation of Texas' voter ID law - which mandated that pre-approved picture ID's be presented when a voter casts a vote.

The Justice Department argued that the law disproportionately disenfranchises minority voters - especially Hispanic voters. From the NYT:

In a letter to the Texas state government, Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said the state had failed to meet its requirement, under the Voting Rights Act, to show that the measure would not disproportionately disenfranchise registered minority voters.

“Even using the data most favorable to the state, Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver’s license or a personal identification card,” Mr. Perez wrote, “and that disparity is statistically significant.”

Texas has roughly 12.8 million registered voters, of whom about 2.8 million are Hispanic. The state had supplied two sets of data comparing its voter rolls with a list of people who had valid state-issued photo identification cards — one from September and the other from January — showing that Hispanic voters were 46.5 percent to 120 percent more likely to lack such identification than were non-Hispanics.

Under the Voting Rights Act, jurisdictions that have a history of suppressing minority voting — like Texas — must show that any proposed change to voting rules would not have a disproportionate effect on minority voters, even if there is no evidence of discriminatory intent.

Such “pre-clearance” can be granted either by the Justice Department or by a panel of federal judges.
This story raises a few issues we will be hitting on 16-week 2301 soon enough:

- The Voting Rights Act
- Preclearance.
- Voter ID laws. State Requirements.
- Electoral Fraud.
- Justice Department, Civil Rights Division.

Elections and Legitimacy

Elections, as we argue in 2301, are devices which among other things connect the general population with the law, thereby lending it legitimacy. But if an election seems to have been fraudulent, the opposite can occur. This is especially true if the fraud seems obvious, and a large percentage of the population agrees. The governing system then loses legitimacy, society crumbles and either government does something to reestablish legitimacy or removes the pretense and just clamps down on the population.

This may help explain the results of the recent election in Iran. Its president was reelected by a comfortable margin, a result which seems improbable based on popular opinion. Fraud is widely suspected. Protests have erupted, and some suspect a coup is in the works.

Andrew Sullivan claims that this story is only breaking because the blogosphere is pushing it, not the mainstream media. Even Twitter helped.

Voter ID Bill Passes Texas Senate

From The Dallas Morning News:

Democratic and Republican senators skirmished Tuesday over legislation that would require Texans to show a photo ID before voting – but the debate was mainly for show, as the measure was expected to win approval.

From the moment the Senate convened Tuesday morning to consider the GOP-backed voter ID bill, it was obvious that any important votes would wind up 19-12, the exact partisan split in the chamber.

- Republicans like it.
- Democrats don't.
- The controlling Supreme Court case: Crawford v. Marion County Election Board.

Voter ID Showdown

I'll go out on a limb and predict that SB 362 will be the most controversial bill this legislative session.

That's an easy call.

Armies of Lawyers

Slate tells us that they are set to descent across the country for both major parties to challenge ineligible voters -- if the are Republican -- and fight voter suppression -- if the are Democrat:

With an estimated 9 million new voters registered, lawyers on each side will be ghost-busting their election nightmare of choice: Democrats claim Republicans seek to suppress the vote—particularly student and minority votes—through polling-place intimidation, threatening robo calls, and illegal voter-roll purges. Republicans respond—indeed John McCain expressly announced at the final debate—that Democrats are "destroying the fabric of democracy" by signing up Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Daisy, who will all then vote in coordinated efforts to steal the election.

...

Election litigation is a boom industry, even in a crumbling economy. Hasen recently published a study indicating that the number of lawsuits filed over elections rose from an average of 94 in the four years before the 2000 election to an average of 230 in the six years after. Paradoxically, the best way to inoculate America against the growing pandemic of "vote fraud" allegations from the political right, and the anxiety over widespread voter intimidation and suppression from the left, may be by throwing more lawyers at it. That's why the single most important role for the armies of attorneys working the 2008 election may ultimately just be to be there: to avert the biggest conflicts and bear witness to the small ones. Send in enough lawyers, and you may just ensure that a watched polling place never boils.

Does Voter Fraud Exist?

Dahlia Lithwick says no.

Large-scale, coordinated vote stealing doesn't happen. The incentives—unlike the incentives for registration fraud—just aren't there. In an interview this week with Salon, Lorraine Minnite of Barnard College, who has studied vote fraud systematically, noted that "between 2002 to 2005 only one person was found guilty of registration fraud. Twenty others were found guilty of voting while ineligible and five were guilty of voting more than once. That's 26 criminal voters." Twenty-six criminal voters despite the fact that U.S. attorneys, like David Iglesias in New Mexico, were fired for searching high and low for vote-fraud cases to prosecute and coming up empty. Twenty-six criminal voters despite the fact that five days before the 2006 election, then-interim U.S. Attorney Bradley Schlozman exuberantly (and futilely) indicted four ACORN workers, even when Justice Department policy barred such prosecutions in the days before elections. RNC General Counsel Sean Cairncross has said he is unaware of a single improper vote cast because of bad cards submitted in the course of a voter-registration effort. Republican campaign consultant Royal Masset says, "[I]n-person voter fraud is nonexistent. It doesn't happen, and ... makes no sense because who's going to take the risk of going to jail on something so blatant that maybe changes one vote?"

Tracking Problems in Voting

Wired Magazine has created a map where people who have problems voting will be able to make their problems known.

Should be worth watching.

Voters Purged in Swing States

From the NYT:

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

...

The screening or trimming of voter registration lists in the six states — Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina — could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers.

Some states allow such voters to cast provisional ballots. But they are often not counted because they require added verification.

...

States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and remove the names of voters who should no longer be listed; but for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.

The six swing states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Michigan and Colorado are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.

Voter Fraud, Real and/or Imagined

The New York Times reports today on ongoing disputes concerning voter fraud.

Traditionally, Republicans have argued that voter fraud is pervasive and that voters are not intimidated when they come to the polls. Democrats argue the opposite, that fraud is not a problem, but voter intimidation is.

The current controversy concerns whether voter fraud has in fact been pervasive recently. A draft of a report commissioned by the Election Assistance Commission stated that it was not, which seems to have not been the conclusion the commission wanted. The final report stated that the evidence was inconclusive. Critics wonder whether the preliminary results were watered down purposefully.

This is ultimately an electoral dispute because more people identify with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party and if they all show up to vote, Democrats win. But since the Democratic coalition includes poorer and minority voters who may not have proper identification, requiring ID suppresses their ability to vote. Fewer voting Democrats, greater Republican success.

Of course we have the right to demand that only legitimate voters be able to vote and the the process be conducted fairly, so a dilemma lies at the heart of this dispute, but I believe it is fair to assume that the overriding concern is victory. As my 2301's remember, similar accusations confronted the Progressives who were accused of cleaning up politics by limiting participation by the poor.

The story points out that this issue underlies attorneygate. The fired attorneys were not aggressively pushing voter fraud cases, which in turn points out the conflict that exists between the political and bureaucratic wings of the executive. The careerists attorneys consider themselves above politics, the White House does not.