Commentary: Majority of American Voters Rightly Concerned About Vote Fraud

TenneseeStar.com

by John R. Lott Jr.

 

Watching the news, you’d be led to believe that vote fraud doesn’t exist in the United States. Since the election on November 8, news article after news article has simply dismissed any claims of vote fraud as “baseless” (New York Times and CNN) and “without evidence” (NPR, New York Times, and Washington Post). Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is lambasted for “stoking fears on mail-in ballots.” And the news coverage was no different after the 2020 election.

But American voters aren’t convinced. A Rasmussen Reports survey from late September found that 84% of likely voters were concerned about election integrity in this year’s congressional elections. It was a belief shared by every category of voters, including liberals and Democrats, though they were less concerned than conservatives and Republicans.

Voters thought that “making sure that there is no cheating in elections” was more important than “making it easier to for everyone to vote.” The margin was 62% to 36%. The highest-paid individuals and those with graduate school educations are the most concerned about making it “easier for everybody to vote.” Those who didn’t complete high school and high school graduates were the most concerned about fraud. That hardly fits with fears that voter IDs and other anti-fraud measures will disenfranchise the poorest and least educated.

The slow ballot counts in heavily contested Arizona and Nevada have hardly given Americans confidence, and surveys show that most likely voters think that mail-in voting makes cheating easier.

What is amazing is how much our voting rules have changed in such a short period of time. Our elections are now much less secure than elsewhere in the world.

“Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud,” concluded the 2005 report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform. The bipartisan commission waschaired by former Democratic President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III. Former Democratic Senate majority leader Tom Daschle was another prominent Democrat on the commission.

But those bipartisan fears are so 2005.

Mail-in ballots, which are sent to all registered voters, are much more problematic than absentee ballots. The latter go only to those who specifically request them. I lived in an apartment building in Nevada during the primary in 2020, and I received ballots for the three previous tenants. There were ballots dumped all over the mailroom floor.

The commission’s report provided numerous examples of vote fraud with absentee ballots, but there are many more recent examples. In September, the Biden Department of Justice charged a New York state Republican official with applying “for absentee ballots in the names of people who had no interest in voting in 2021 and did not request absentee ballots or Schofield’s assistance in voting or obtaining absentee ballots.” Other recent examples of fraud include a congressional race in North Carolina and a city council race in Mississippi.

In 2012, even the New York Times ran a news article titled “Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises.”

But the big problem with mail-in or absentee ballots is vote buying. “Vote buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail,” the Carter Baker Commission noted. How can you detect vote buying when both the buyer and seller are incentivized to hide the transaction?

Mail-in ballots allow people to prove how they voted. A practice called ballot harvesting then allows a third party to collect the ballots and ensure that they will be cast. These two practices, taken together, guarantee that the person buying the votes is getting what they pay for and creates the very real possibility of vote buying on a massive scale.

Most countries carefully restrict absentee ballots because of these concerns. In Europe, 35 of the 47 countries ban the issuing of absentee ballots to people who are legally resident in the country. Another 10 allow anyone to request an absentee ballot, but require people to go in person to pick up their absentee ballots and provide a government-issued photo ID to make sure that the right person gets the ballot.

France used to have rules similar to ours, but the country banned absentee voting in 1975 after massive fraud was discovered on the island region of Corsica. There, postal ballots were stolen or bought and others were cast in the names of dead people.

A long history of vote-buying led to America’s gradual adoption of secret ballots between 1888 and 1950. Secret ballots made it harder for vote buyers to monitor how people actually voted. My research with Larry Kenny at the University of Florida has found that voter turnout fell by 8% to 12% after states adopted the secret ballot. This suggests that a lot of people stopped voting when they were no longer getting paid.

The media and Democrats tell us that vote fraud doesn’t exist, and that there are no problems with mail-in ballots. But to believe that, we must believe that Americans are different from people in the rest of the world, and that Americans today are different from Americans in the past. Let’s learn the lessons of electoral history and stop imagining that the United States is above it all.

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12 Comments
Aunt Acid
Aunt Acid
December 11, 2022 2:54 pm

No one really gives a fuck. Nothing is going to change. Dominion has got this.

Anonymous
Anonymous
  Aunt Acid
December 11, 2022 4:08 pm

Give a fuck? Yes. Change? No. Not happening. At least not via petition of the fedgov per the 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Clearly an inactive law.

This is still active, however, and eternally, as far as I am concerned:

” . . . Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,-That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government . . . ”
~ U.S. Declaration of Independence

2022 =1776

Colorado Artist
Colorado Artist
  Anonymous
December 11, 2022 9:10 pm

When you read about “Those Who Cannot Be Criticized”
and their hundreds of trillions of dollar fortunes, their
control over all banking, news, virtually everything we see and hear,
they are NEVER going to allow anything like elections disrupt their
designs. They and their puppets will have to be dealt with directly.
They got virtually every European country disarnned, Australia, India,
Japan, and China. They work tirelessly to disarnn the 150 million of us.
And it won’t be easy, trillions of dollars by whole countries arnnies.

Anonymous
Anonymous
December 11, 2022 3:29 pm

As long as the CCP , Soros and the WEF Finance the DNC and media outlets fraud in favor of democrats will continue

Anonymous
Anonymous
December 11, 2022 4:03 pm

Even if the votes were counted, it would still only reelect the gummint.

Abolish the state, anyway. Voting just means 60% gang up on 40%. No justice.

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2387235-on-liberty

“A man’s natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime; whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, or by millions calling themselves a government.” ― Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2095916-no-treason-the-constitution-of-no-authority

“Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible ‘anarchy’, why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?” ― Murray N. Rothbard

Anonymous
Anonymous
  Anonymous
December 11, 2022 8:13 pm

“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.” ― Ayn Rand

June
June
December 11, 2022 4:24 pm

Doesn’t matter how many people are concerned, nothing will be done about this. The regime likely delights in such a public display of humiliation of letting us all know that our votes are meaningless and we have no say in our government. They enjoy rubbing our faces in it, and have no fear of the voters as most are so dumbed down and brainwashed they would never be able to do anything about the lawlessness.

Aunt Acid
Aunt Acid
  June
December 11, 2022 7:14 pm

Zacklee.

hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer
December 11, 2022 9:24 pm

Funniest title ever. I thought it was a Babylon Bee article.

Hey dummies, why are you still voters?

cricket
cricket
December 12, 2022 6:44 am

Elections are rigged and scripted – just like pro wrestling

Anonymous
Anonymous
  cricket
December 12, 2022 7:52 am

And all of this babble is the kayfabe.

Jdog
Jdog
December 12, 2022 10:23 am

Concerned? Really? The election process is a complete scam, and if you vote, you are perpetuating the scam. The only way to get government under control is to remove their legitimacy by not voting, and not going along with anything they say.