Voter fraud

About

Voter fraud is when individual voters attempt to vote illegally in a way that might change the outcome of an election. It is extremely rare, and has never influenced the outcome of a major election. The Wall Street Journal defines it as "a term used to refer to cases in which one voter impersonates another at the poll to cast a fraudulent vote".

Despite this, conservoid politicians and propaganda outlets like to claim that it is rampant and wide-spread, as justification for draconian measures to restrict voting access and reduce voting among disempowered groups who are more likely to vote against them.

Of the few instances of actual voter fraud found, the overwhelming majority were committed by conservoids attempting to prove the existence of voter fraud.

Usage

The term is often used in a way that includes other types of electoral fraud, but this is incorrect. Voter fraud is electoral fraud that is committed specifically through an attempted act of illegal voting – especially where that vote would give the voter more electoral representation than that to which they are entitled, which most often involves voting more than once.

Instances

2020

• (Chaffee County, CO) Barry Morphew has been charged with murder in the disappearance of his wife a year ago and with voter fraud for voting for Donald Trump using his wife's mail-in ballot.
  • 2021-05-14 Husband charged with murder of missing wife in Colorado is also charged with voter fraud for filling out her ballot
• (Marple, PA) Bruce Bartman, 70, marked his deceased mother’s absentee ballot with a check mark next to President Donald Trump’s name, and mailed it in.
  • 2021-04-30
    • Man admits to voter fraud in casting dead mother’s ballot «Bartman apologized for his actions, telling the judge "I was isolated last year in lockdown. I listened to too much propaganda and made a stupid mistake."»
    • Delco man gets probation for casting dead mother's vote for Donald Trump
  • 2021-05-04 Pennsylvania man admits he voted for Trump with his dead mom’s name: 'I listened to too much propaganda'$
• (Las Vegas, NV) Donald Kirk Hartle, a business executive, voted in his dead wife's name and then claimed someone else had done it.
  • 2021-11-15 Nevada Man Featured in GOP Ad on Voter Fraud Admits to Forging Dead Wife's Name on Ballot
  • 2021-11-21 Uh Oh. More Voter Fraud Proven.
• (Delaware County, OH) Edward Snodgrass, «57, a Porter Township trustee and a registered Republican, admitted to casting a ballot for his newly deceased father after forging his signature on an absentee ballot. [...] Snodgrass told NBC News that he made "an honest error" by fulfilling "a dying man's wish."»
  • 2021-06-24 Township trustee in Delaware County pleads guilty in voter fraud case
• (Orlando, FL) Joan Halstead, Jay Ketcik, and John Rider have been charged with casting multiple ballots. All three appear to be Trump supporters; two are registered Republicans.
  • 2021-12-14 3 residents of The Villages arrested after casting multiple votes in 2020 election
• (Harris County, TX) NOT VOTER FRAUD Mark Aguirre, a licensed private investigator fired from the Houston police in 2003, was indicted on an assault charge for running a man off the road and pointing a gun to his head because he thought the man was committing voter fraud.
  • 2021-12-15 Former Houston cop who thought A/C repairman was a voter fraud mastermind indicted on felony assault charge Aguirre «was hired to investigate fraud claims and paid about $266,400 by the Liberty Center for God and Country around the time of the incident. That group is led by Steven Hotze, the local conservative activist, and Jared Woodfill, the former Harris County Republican Party chairman.»
• (Chester County, PA) Ralph Thurman, a 72-year-old Republican, was caught voting twice (once for himself and once for his son, a Democrat) by progressive pollworker Eric Frank
  • 2021-10-21
    • Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick paid out his first voter fraud bounty to a progressive poll worker in Pennsylvania who caught a Republican voting illegally
    • Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has paid his first voter fraud bounty. It went to an unexpected recipient
  • 2020-09-20 A Chester County man admitted he voted illegally in his son’s name in the 2020 election

2016

• (Rendon, TX) Crystal Mason filed a provisional ballot, not realizing that she was ineligible to vote due to being on supervised release from prison for tax fraud. She is being vigorously prosecuted by Republican officials who want to make political hay out of any apparent voter-fraud cases they can find.
  • 2021-12-14 The Atlantic: When the Myth of Voter Fraud Comes for You$ (archive.org)

2012

• (Pine Knoll Shores, NC) NO FRAUD Jim Turner, apparently a Barack Obama supporter, said on social media that he voted multiple times (different districts) in order to "save our country from the world envisioned by Mitt Romney". It later turned out that he was joking, and had not actually voted illegally.

Links

• Wikipedia redirects to "electoral fraud", which covers other types of voting-related fraud as well, with emphasis on non-individual action
• Conservapedia «is the crime of a voter submitting a ballot he or she is not entitled to cast.»: This actually seems accurate. «...it has been estimated at 2,000 cases in the 2000, 2004, and 2008 elections combined. However, it is difficult to gauge the exact number, and many cases may go undiscovered or unreported. It can change the outcome of a close election.»: This, however, does not, and it cites only a paywalled Wall Street Journal article which notes that researchers «say they have so far found little direct evidence that the practice is common enough to affect the results of elections, even close ones.»
• RationalWiki «a moral panic weirdly popular in the United States. As genuine cases of voter fraud are almost non-existent, it is almost always a dog whistle term for people of color voting.» This.
• SourceWatch «refers to attempts by either individual voters or voting-focused organizations to affect the outcome of an election by casting votes with fraudulent identities or misrepresenting eligibility to vote.» The "or voting-focused organizations" part of that is a different kind of electoral fraud. Voter fraud is by definition only committed by individuals casting illegal votes.