The big, bad bogeyman

The Republicans are constantly beating the drum of voter fraud, talking about dead people registering to vote, people showing up several places in town, and on and on. Has never resonated with my experience in any of the states/cities where I've lived, so I was dubious, but I imagined they must have at least a few regional scandals to point to.

But nope. There's just about no proof of more than a handful of frauds anywhere in the country, mostly individual misunderstandings, nothing systemic.

Here's the nickel summary: In 2002, DOJ changed their guidelines to make it easier to prosecute voter fraud. They made it a priority to find voter fraud cases. They appointed a clean slate of U.S. Attorneys loyal to the Republican Party. They set up training classes to help prosecutors charge and win voter fraud cases. But after all that, they managed to demonstrate fraud in a grand total of only 86 cases over four years. And even then, many of the cases of confirmed fraud were simply mistakes, while virtually none of them were actually designed to affect the outcome of an election.

Meanwhile, ID laws threaten to turn away large numbers of voters in low-income neighborhoods, huge amounts of money are being wasted chasing phantoms, and occasional lives are being ruined over simple oversights. Classic Bush Administration in action.

(via Medley)

Update: more here.