Wisconsin showed us all what the problems could be if we try to hold an election in the period of widespread isolation. The Democratic governor pleaded with the Republican-led legislature to postpone the election. They refused. He tried to expand voting by mail. The Republicans resisted. The legislature didn't provide the additional resources necessary to process the explosion of requests for mail-in ballots.
Meanwhile, most of the poll workers were senior citizens, a high risk group for catching COVID-19 and experiencing the worst of the symptoms. They warned election officials that they weren't going to show up to run the polling places. There were no where near enough poll workers to open all of the polling locations. This was a huge problem in big cities, such as Milwaukee. Wisconsin saw huge lines, with waiting times in excess of three hours to vote, when people really needed to stay home.
If Wisconsin had been prepared, and ready to process the higher demand for mail-in ballots, it could have avoided its election disaster.
But the Republican Party, led by President Donald Trump, oppose mil-in ballots. Well, except for themselves. We all are very familiar now with the press conference where Trump was confronted with the fact that he voted as an absentee by a mail-in ballot in the latest Florida election. When asked why that was ok, his response was simply, "Because I'm allowed to." Meanwhile, Republicans don't want the choice to vote by mail to be available for more of the general public.
Five states have switched to elections run entirely through mail-in ballots. In fact, the expected battle ground states for the 2020 presidential election all permit voting by mail, without requiring an excuse for why the voter cannot physically make it to the polls on Election Day. They are Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. In some ways, the availability of voting by mail is a moot issue. So why do Republicans oppose mail-in ballots?
The proffered reason is fraud. According to Republicans, mail-in ballots are fraught with the potential for fraud. We need to require identification to fight against fraud at the polls. How can we be sure that the actual voter is the one who submits the mail-in ballot?
Keep in mind, the President has voted by mail in Florida.
Trump has said something at a press conference, albeit incoherent, when asked about his voting in Florida by mail about the required certifications. Whether he was saying the certification requirements were too onerous, or that they were to easy to fake, I just couldn't tell.
But, let's talk about these certification safe-guards. First, mail-in ballots are bar-coded and tracked. Election officials can tell if someone has tried to submit a mail-in ballot and vote in person in the same election. They can tell if someone has chosen not to submit the mail-in ballot. They can tell the voter if their mail-in ballot was accepted or rejected, and if rejected, why.
Ballots have signature, notary and witness requirements to protect against fraudulent voting.
Now, there is a case in California challenging the rejection of about 4,500 mail-in ballots because election officials found the signature on the ballot did not match the signature for the voter on file.
It's hard to understand why Republicans cite this lawsuit in support of their argument against mail-in ballots. It's not proof of fraud. It's proof of the system flagging potential fraud. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Of course, Trump did made a vague allegation of thousands of mail-in ballots being collected, and dumped. Perhaps this is what he was referring to. But what happened in California was no where near as nefarious as he would like you to believe. The actions of the elections officials was all done out in the open, and subject to legal challenge, which is exactly what is happening right now.
Among the arguments in this case, which is being pursued by the ACLU, is that the ballots were wrongly rejected because the election officials weren't handwriting experts. Keep in mind, some states require three election officials to examine the signature on the ballots. At any rate, the California case shows the need to provide more funding to hone and strengthen security measures.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in the House tried to provide that funding. Republicans complained that it was through an emergency bill to address issues raise by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the shortage of surgical masks and other personal protective equipment. They cried that it had no business being there. But the whole purpose of this bill was to address the issues raised by the pandemic. How we will vote, and keeping the process safe for voters, has become a vital issue because of how contagious SARS-CoV2 is. Republicans didn't seem to mind when Mitch McConnel put some extra protection in the bill for the sunscreen industry, which just so happens to be located in his state. Arguments concerning unnecessary pork are just hypocritical.
Republicans, and the White House in particular, like to point to a database allegedly showing cases of election fraud collated by the Heritge Foundation in support of their arguments against mail-in ballots.
The Heritage Foundation. This is a conservative think tank. It exists solely for the purpose of promoting and supporting Republican policies. This is not an unbiased, disinterested source.
When you look at the cases cited in its database, this becomes clear. There's no methodology behind the cases they've collected. When there are convictions, there is no attempt to put those cases in context to determine if there was really voter fraud. Plus, the database addresses alleged fraud in general, not solely voting by mail fraud.
This database was clearly made to give low-information voters something to point to, without the need to engage in critical thinking.
Even then,its so-called evidence dates back to the 1940s. With respect to the billions of votes case since the 1940s, the Heritage Foundation has found evidence of fraud in a fraction or a fraction of a percent.
Keep in mind, the Heritage Foundation created this database in response to President Trump's claim that three million fraudulent votes were cast in 2016, which is the only reason he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. Remember, he put a Commission together to try to prove rampant fraud, even though, by virtue of the electoral college, he won the presidency. That Commission found nothing and was quietly disbanded. Likewise, even by stretching the definition of fraud, the Heritage Foundation found no where near the level of fraud that President Trump alleged.
A closer look of the Heritage Foundation's database is illuminating. The cases listed include cases from the 1980s and 1990s. So, its proof of supposed rampant fraud needs to reach back thirty, forty years for evidence. In fact the database includes cases from 1972 (Nixon-McGovern) and 1948 (Truman-Dewey).
The headline of the Heritage Foundation's database is that they found a little over 1,100 convictions for voter fraud. That's it. In over seventy years of elections, they could only find 1,100 convictions for voter fraud. And of that number, less than eighty -- 80 -- involve mail-in ballot fraud.
But this point needs to be emphasized. These cases represent people who were caught. The laws worked. People who tried to vote for others, who intimidated voters, who tried to vote for a dead relative, were convicted and either served time in jail, paid a fine, or lost their job.
But more importantly, these were cases that could have been prevented with the types of security measures discussed above. Bar-coding could help make sure a person isn't out there collecting a dozen ballots and turning them in all at once. Notary publics are required to ensure that the person signing a document is the person they say they are. Notaries are required to keep logs, note the date, note what kind of document it is, and note what kind of identification was used. Notaries' ethical rules require them to refuse to notarize a document if there are signs of duress, coercion, or incapacity. It's really hard for a dead person to sign a document in front of a notary public.
Can a notary be part of a scheme to commit fraud? Well, of course. But so can an election official who is present at the polls. Any notary or election official who does take part in such a scheme risks losing their job, and being convicted of a crime. In a few cases cited by the Heritage Foundation, that is exactly what happened. Election officials were caught, lost their jobs and were convicted.
Most of the opportunity to engage in such schemes, however, is reduced with redundancy. It's hard for an election official to engage in a fraudulent scheme when there are others looking over his or her shoulder. It's hard for a notary to approve of a fraudulent signature when state law requires a notary public and a witness or two to verify the signature.
This emphasizes the point that it is vital to ensure that states put these types of procedures in place, and that they have the money to invest in the people needed to do the security checks and the technology that makes the security checks possible.
Most disturbingly, however, is this President's penchant for exaggeration. He wants us to believe that fraud is going on with respect to thousands and thousands, if not millions, of votes. Yet even an organization friendly to his cause could find no such evidence of numbers that large.
Some cases of voter fraud exist. But of the billions of votes cast since 1948, the Heritage Foundation could only find conviction of about 1,100, a tiny fraction of a fraction of a percent. And of that number, less then eighty involved mail-in ballot fraud. And even those cases were easily caught with proper security measures. Voting by mail is not the pyrrhia that Republicans and President Trump would like you to believe.
By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.
You can find a video of this essay on YouTube: https://youtu.be/tLqeal6xvkA
References
The Heritage Foundation’s database of supposed voting fraud cases.
A response to the Heritage Foundation’s database compiled by the Brennen Center.
Further criticism of the so-called proof of voter fraud, and Trump’s commission organized to find fraud in the 2016 election.
No comments:
Post a Comment