Widespread voter fraud simply does not happen. Why do so many people believe it does? | Opinion

As another presidential election appears on the horizon, the conspiracy theorists in the Republican Party are already trotting out the specter of voter fraud in case they do not win the election. Accusations of voter fraud are nothing new, but in recent years, conservatives have adopted the principle of “truthiness” proposed by Karl Rove: if you claim it often or loud enough, it becomes an acceptable alternative to the real truth.

The GOP offer the same tropes about the usual suspects of voter fraud: dead people voting, illegal immigrants voting, fictional people voting, and lost ballot boxes.

In the Internet age we can assess whether there is any truth to these claims. I did a Google search for voter fraud that yielded the following results.

Former President Donald Trump argued without any evidence that mail in voting is rife with fraud and lies. Oregon has used mail-in voting for more than 20 years. Between 2000 and 2019, voters cast over 61 million mail-in votes: only 38 of those voters were convicted of voter fraud.

The Brennan Center for Justice in the New York Law School published a summary of various studies about voter fraud.

A professor at Columbia University and a 2017 study by the Washington Post found no evidence of fraud.

A comprehensive Washington Post study in 2014 discovered only thirty-one credible incidences of voter fraud in over one billion votes cast.

Two studies at Arizona State University produced only ten cases of suspected fraud between 2000 and 2012. The same school analyzed the 2016 election could only verify four cases of fraud.

A 2014 paper in a Harvard University Cooperative Study estimated that the percent of non-citizens voting was zero.

A 2012 study by the Republican National Lawyer Association found that between 2000 and 2010 twenty-one states had zero or one fraud conviction.

In 2021, the Associated Press exposed 475 possible cases in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. All the people investigated for voter fraud were Republicans who supported Trump.

A reporter published a book in 2012 that examined 30 years of data to find any evidence in which voter impersonation affected the outcome of any election. The reporter could not find a single case.

Kris Kobach, Secretary of State in Kansas, who had a history of voter suppression, insisted on a data review of 84 million votes cast in 22 states. There were fourteen instances of voter fraud for a 0.00000017 percent fraud rate, 17 in 100 billion votes.

A study by the United States Department of Justice Unit that investigated voter fraud had a 0.00000013 percent fraud rate.

A multi-year study in Iowa found only twenty seven prosecutions in 1.6 million votes.

Lawmakers in Texas enacted a strict photo ID law to protect against voter fraud. They verified one conviction and one guilty plea in all of the elections between 2002 and 2014.

Widespread voter fraud is an urban myth with no basis in fact. A much more serious and documentable concern is voter suppression that prevents legally registered American from voting.

Given these facts, why do people still believe that voter fraud is real?

Logicians would say this is the straw man fallacy of setting up and then disputing a statement that is not being made. These people are quick to try to change the topic by engaging in “Whataboutism” by dredging up irrelevant alternate topics.

I think it may be even simpler than that. At its core, the tinfoil hat crowd really doubts the integrity of the candidates they support.

Roger Guffey is a retired Fayette County teacher.