Panel speakers say voter fraud very rare | State and Regional | jhnewsandguide.com

It’s even rarer in Wyoming, which has experienced just three instances of voter fraud in 40 years, and none since 2014. Elections are audited each year and subject to numerous redundancies and protocols intended to ensure security. Polling places are small and staffed with election judges from both parties, and voters’ registrations are matched to home addresses.

“In the state of Wyoming, I’m not concerned about fraud,” said Crook County Clerk Linda Fritz — who leads the Wyoming County Clerks’ Association — during an Equality State Policy Center forum on election fraud Thursday.

Yet, there is a persistent belief — particularly among conservatives — that voter fraud runs rampant in American elections. In December 2011, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus claimed the state of Wisconsin was “absolutely riddled with voter fraud” despite the lack of any evidence to support the claim.

According to a database maintained by the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, just 1,238 documented instances of voter fraud have been reported nationally since 1982, resulting in 857 convictions. It’s such a rare phenomenon, you’re actually more likely to see a UFO than you are to find evidence of voter fraud. In April alone, the National UFO Recording Center reported more than 1,000 UFO sightings across the country, compared to just 17 reported instances of voter fraud in 2020.

In Wyoming, the state Republican Party has passed a resolution advocating for new limits on absentee voting — despite research by groups like the American Statistical Association demonstrating no connection between the practice and voter fraud. Meanwhile, a bill to implement mandatory photo identification requirements at the polls has garnered 45 co-sponsors between the House and Senate, all but assuring that the bill will pass this winter in spite of some concern from local elections officials.

Why have claims of voter fraud continued to persist, even as internal election security measures have grown even more sophisticated in recent years? Since the start of the Vietnam War and, particularly, in the years following the Nixon Administration, trust in government and institutions has been devolving among the American public, according to a decades-long analysis of Pew Research data, leaving those already wary of government more susceptible to claims that the system isn’t working properly, or even failing.

“The rhetoric of this issue of rampant voter fraud that’s going on is really powerful for a number of reasons,” Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director of the Voting Rights & Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said on Thursday’s panel. “Part of why is because it does play on that lack of trust and faith that people have. People love a conspiracy. They like to believe that when things aren’t going their way that there’s some reason that’s happening, and that there’s something for them to point to.”

But a lot of that mistrust can also stem from a misunderstanding of how the system actually works, or a lack of information necessary to be able to think critically about those claims.

“The vast majority of the public does not understand the election administration or processes,” said Amber McReynolds, CEO for the National Vote At Home Institute and Coalition and former director of elections for the City and County of Denver. “The vast majority of candidates have no clue. And the vast majority of legislators have never toured [an] elections office or actually gone to see the process in action. So that’s basically the worst recipe for disaster.”

McReynolds said that state legislatures should seek not to restrict ballot access, but to instead expand it, introducing additional protocols to ensure those who are eligible to cast a ballot can do so fairly, efficiently and securely.

Ballot tracking and automatic voter registration were just two measures she recommended to do that, saying they would increase security and enhance customers’ experience.