Was voter fraud potentially as pervasive as President Trump suggested? The latest study suggests it's possible:
Bottom Line: The media's narrative to attempt to discredit President Trump started well before he even took office. So much noise and drama has played out that it's easy to forget about one of the most provocative and earliest stories perpetuated by the President-Elect last fall. Voter fraud. Despite there being plenty of opportunity, and evidence of actual voter fraud during the 2016 cycle, the media moved to immediately discredit President Trump on the notion that potentially millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election. What the media didn't do was any actual research (that might mess up the narrative after all). Here's some of the info I gathered at the time:
- From 2000-2012 there were 2,608 investigated cases of voter fraud nationally
- There are eight different types of voter fraud
- the most common forms of attempted fraud are by absentee ballots, convicted felons voting and double voting (generally in multiple states)
- The rarest form of voter fraud is impersonation
Since 2000, 13 Florida convictions for voter fraud have occurred. So there provably is and has been voter fraud across the country and right here in Florida. What's perhaps even more instructive is the opportunity for voter fraud. According to the Pew Research Center in 2012:
- 1.8 million deceased Americans are still "active" registered voters
- 2.75 million Americans are registered to vote in multiple states
- That's more than 4.5 million illegally registered voters. And those are just the easiest cases to spot. That same study found that all told there were 24 million voter registrations that were no longer valid or significantly inaccurate.
So what's real and what isn't? First, any reporter/media outlet that reports that there isn't any evidence of voter fraud lacks any credibility and they're out-and-out lying as demonstrated above - there has been voter fraud in every Presidential election cycle studied since 2000. What we don't yet know is what the outcome of the 2016 cycle will result in terms of provable voter fraud but here are just a smattering of clear issues that could be an indication of something even more significant:
- Last year the Public Interest Legal Foundation studied eight different counties in Virginia and found that 1046 illegal immigrants were registered to vote
- In Virginia the FBI has an open investigation into 20 voters who registered to vote after they died
- In Pennsylvania 43,000 voters were registered twice - in 2012 700 voted twice in the same election
So what's the latest? "Just Facts" released their latest findings using Census data and research from Harvard and YouGov. What did they find?
- In 2008 the range of potential illegal votes ranged from 38,000 to 2.8 million nationally (with 1.2 million being the best estimate)
Investors Business Daily picked up on this late last week and made projections about non-citizen population growth and projections for the 2016 election as a result. I'd caution against all of these types of "projections". That can't be done empirically and undermines the credibility of the argument. Additionally, the narrative is advanced as though 100% of illegally cast votes go to Democrats. While it's likely that the lion's share do based on historical data, voting trends and immigration enforcement policies/ differences - it's not a safe assumption. Part of what's most frustrating to me is the focus. It's always on the national races. How many state and local elections are impacted ongoing as well? Whether President Trump was right or not there's a problem with illegal voting. For all of the left's focus on Russia without any evidence of collusion with the Trump administration, what's not happening is a focus on what we do know is illegally impacting our elections. If fair and honest elections are controversial - you know you're dealing with someone who believes they're benefiting from them.