As voters went to the polls this morning, the Washington Post published another of its reliably false reports that voter fraud is a myth, and even worse, President Trump and his attorney were using the myth to “intimidate voters.”
Voter fraud is not a myth, contrary to the Post’s breathless report, as a three-minute Google search would have told its staff writer.
Voter fraud is very real, and fraudsters are ever at work.
The Post Report
The Post’s headline divulged its spin: “Without evidence, Trump and Sessions warn of voter fraud in Tuesday’s elections.”
Why one would need “evidence” to warn about a possible crime we are not given to know, but at any rate, the Post was alarmed about a tweet from The Donald:
Law Enforcement has been strongly notified to watch closely for any ILLEGAL VOTING which may take place in Tuesday’s Election (or Early Voting). Anyone caught will be subject to the Maximum Criminal Penalties allowed by law. Thank you!
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The Post was also concerned about Trump’s comments at a rally in Cleveland:
In remarks to reporters on his way to a campaign rally in Cleveland, Trump also falsely claimed that voter fraud is commonplace.
“Just take a look,” he said. “All you have to do is go around, take a look at what’s happened over the years, and you’ll see. There are a lot of people — a lot of people — my opinion, and based on proof — that try and get in illegally and actually vote illegally. So we just want to let them know that there will be prosecutions at the highest level.”
As for Sessions, the Post reported, he said, “The Justice Department will follow its usual protocol of sending monitors across the country to protect against voter suppression, intimidation and discrimination; this year, staff will travel to 35 jurisdictions in 19 states to monitor compliance with voting laws.” That’s bad, the Post reported, because “Justice Department officials have not listed voter fraud as a top concern when announcing the deployment of election monitors, as Sessions did Monday.”
These sentiments, the Post reported, are “prompting accusations that his administration is trying to intimidate voters.”
Actually, the Post was probably “prompting accusations” by calling leftists and asking them to make them. Gleefully, they complied. Their comments aren’t worth repeating. You know what they are.
What is worth repeating is a claim that was as bold as it was misinformed:
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the United States. Trump formed a commission to study the issue shortly after he took office that was disbanded without finding evidence of fraud after states refused to turn over voter data.
The obvious question is how anyone would know “there is no evidence” if the “states refused to turn over voter data.”
But beyond that, evidence of commonplace voter fraud is widely available. One can assume the Post would defend its claim by claiming what follows does not meet its definition of “widespread.”
Database Online
The Heritage Foundation maintains an online vote-fraud database with an interactive map. Heritage has documented 1,178 instances of voter fraud and 1,020 convictions.
The types of voter fraud are legion and include false registration, duplicate voting, buying votes, ineligible voting, impersonating someone else at the polls, and ballot petition fraud.
Had the Post reporter done her job and viewed the map, she would have found seven proven cases of fraud in Maryland since 2012, 16 cases in Virginia since 2007, 32 cases in California since 2001, 49 cases in Ohio since 2007, 22 in Pennsylvania since 1998, and 20 cases in New York since 1983. Texas voters suffered 74 cases of fraud since 2005, eight of them in 2018. In three of those cases, the elections were overturned. Then, too, with some states requiring those who wish to challenge election totals to pay the cost of vote verification, few people or organizations would ever be able to afford the cost to check for illegality, making large-scale vote fraud a pretty safe occupation.
As well, common sense tells us that fraud is happening. Not only do Democrats regularly challenge Republican investigations of vote fraud (why do that unless you have something to hide), election expert Kurt Hyde wrote for The New American recently:
On August 16, Direct Action Texas, a group that strives to clean up voter rolls, announced that 280,000 legal-resident, non-citizens in Texas are illegally registered to vote. And four million registered voters in Texas cannot be verified in the database of the Texas Department of Public Safety databases, as is required by law, or by other government databases. That’s 30 percent of all registered voters in the state. It is likely that a large number of those registered are illegal immigrants.
Speaking of Texas, The New American reported about two very recent cases.
Last week, TNA reported that an analysis of election records in the Dallas County Democratic primary on March 6 showed that legally cast ballots were not counted. As well, Democrats in Texas encouraged illegal aliens and noncitizens to cast felonious illegal votes in today’s election.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation alleged that the state party mailed voting applications to noncitizens that invited the fraudulent votes. The party altered the applications by preprinting “Yes” to the questions about “Are you a United States Citizen?” and “Will you be 18 years of age on or before election day?”
PILF has also uncovered non-citizen voting in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
Image: Screenshot from wi.gov
