How prevalent is voter fraud?
What best practices can states implement to combat voter fraud?
What kinds of voter suppression have occurred recently?
Are there criminal penalties?
Are they enforced?

How prevalent is voter fraud?

There is very little systematic data to tell us how widespread voter fraud actually is; most evidence of individuals attempting to subvert the election system is anecdotal. For this reason, the debate surrounding voter fraud and its supposed remedy, voter identification, often gets mired in politically partisan rhetoric rather than facts.

Nonetheless, the evidence that exists suggests voter fraud at the polling place is a relatively minor problem in American elections. The historically close 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington state resulted in a long litigation that involved extensive investigation of voter fraud. Of the 1678 illegal votes uncovered in this investigation, about 1 percent were cast fraudulently, either as "double votes" or on behalf of deceased voters; the rest of the votes were improperly included in the ballot tally as a result of errors on the part of election officials. In addition, a survey produced by the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing and the League of Women Voters of Ohio's 88 counties showed four instances of fraudulent voting out of a total of nine million votes cast in the state's 2002 and 2004 general elections.

Sources/More Information:

A Joint Report on Election Reform Activities
(Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, League of Women Voters of Ohio) June 14, 2005

What best practices can states implement to combat voter fraud?

As a means of dealing with the perceived problem of voter fraud, many states are currently passing legislation requiring all voters to produce some form of identification—sometimes insisting upon government issued photo identification—when they go to vote. While these restrictive voter identification requirements can often disenfranchise eligible voters (for more on this topic see the section on voter ID) there are policies states can implement to guard against voter fraud that make the election system as a whole more secure without disenfranchising voters who lack standard forms of identification.

• Technology: Upgrading the linkages between local and state voter registration databases and the electronic databases of other state agencies can significantly cut down on the number of duplicate and ineligible registrations on the rolls. Providing access to these databases at the local polling places themselves (via laptop) can head off fraudulent voting at the polls as well.
  
  
• Enforcement: Strengthening the prosecution of actual cases of fraud and enforcing voter fraud laws will help to deter potential fraud.
  
  
• Election Day Registration: Although many people believe the myth that allowing voters to register to vote on Election Day increases voter fraud, Election Day Registration (EDR) actually can prevent fraud because it puts registration under the direct supervision of trained election officials, rather than allowing workers at the Department of Motor Vehicles and other sites to control voter registration. Studies show that states offering EDR report very few incidents of fraud, while their turnout is nearly ten points higher than average turnout in states that do not offer EDR.
  
  
• Absentee Ballot Security: Many states consider absentee ballot fraud a more serious threat than polling place fraud. Some states, such as Oregon, which conducts its elections entirely by mail, have successfully implemented systems to prevent fraud. Absentee ballots cannot be forwarded, and each voter must sign an outside envelope that is later verified using a computer signature on record. The state requires ballot drop boxes, set up so voters can save on stamps by hand-delivering them, to be labeled as "official" if they have been set up by elections administrators and "unofficial" when they are set up by outside groups.

What kinds of voter suppression have occurred recently?

In the 2004 election there were many reports of voter suppression and intimidation, though incidents such as these have occurred throughout American history:

• Challenges: Making use of an obscure law allowing challenges to an individual's right to vote, the Republican Party in Ohio preemptively disputed the registrations of more than 35,000 first-time voters from predominantly Democratic and minority areas, requiring them to appear in court to defend their eligibility to vote just days before the election. The GOP also announced plans to dispatch people to polling sites to challenge registrations of pre-selected voters in person—these plans were the subject of several last-minute lawsuits. Similar challenges also occurred in a number of other states, including Florida and Wisconsin.
  
  
• Voter Registration Suppression: In Nevada, according to press reports, workers for a Republican funded private voter registration company that targeted registration efforts at Republicans destroyed forms filled out by Democrats. In Florida, several thousand students and other potential voters found that their party affiliations and addresses had been changed on their registration forms.
  
  
• Deception: In African-American neighborhoods of Milwaukee, a flier purportedly from the "Milwaukee Black Voters League" was distributed, reading,

  SOME WARNINGS FOR ELECTION TIME
  
  IF YOU'VE ALREADY VOTED IN ANY ELECTION THIS YEAR YOU CAN'T VOTE IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
  
  IF YOU [OR ANYBODY IN YOUR FAMILY] HAVE EVER BEEN FOUND GUILTY OF ANYTHING, EVEN A TRAFFIC VIOLATION, YOU CAN'T VOTE IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
  
  . . . IF YOU VIOLATE ANY OF THESE LAWS YOU CAN GET TEN YEARS IN PRISON AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL BE TAKEN AWAY FROM YOU.

  Letters sent on fake NAACP letterhead warned African-American voters that they would be arrested if they tried to vote and had outstanding parking tickets or had not paid child support.
  
  In Pennsylvania, leaflets were distributed on fake county letterhead in a mall, announcing that Republicans should vote on Tuesday, November 2, and Democrats should vote on Wednesday November 3. A similar incident occurred in Cleveland, where letters printed on fake Board of Elections letterhead warned that registrations through the Kerry campaign, America Coming Together, and the NAACP were invalid.

Sources/More Information:

Color It Wrong
Steve Carbo (Demos) December 22, 2004

Election 2004: A Report Card
Tova Wang (The Century Foundation) January 4, 2005

Voter Suppression and Intimidation
Panel Discussion Transcript (Voting in 2004: A Report to the Nation on America’s Election Process) December 7, 2004

Are there criminal penalties?

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 states that "no person […] shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote." This legislation addresses some of the more outright forms of intimidation, but sometimes intimidation is difficult to distinguish from ordinary election-related activity. For example, in Florida, false allegations of voter fraud led to fruitless investigations that involved sending uniformed officers to the homes of African-American voters for questioning. Investigations such as these have the effect of intimidating voters, by invoking memories, especially for older African-Americans, of police persecution at the polls fifty years ago, but they do not necessarily fall under the Voting Rights Act unless it is clear that they were part of an intentional effort to intimidate voters.

Sources/More Information:

Efforts to Suppress the Vote: An Overview
Edward B. Foley and Amber Lea Gosnell (Election Law @ Moritz) September 2004

Text of Voting Rights Act of 1965

Are they enforced?

There has been a limited effort to investigate allegations of intimidation and suppression, and to prosecute the responsible parties, especially after the 2004 election, in which there were widespread reports of such tactics. However, it is likely that these laws are under-enforced, both because they are difficult to detect or difficult to prosecute.

Sources/More Information:

Nationwide Election Incidents Database
(VoteProtect.org)