According to the Democratic Party, the corporate media, and some ostensibly nonpartisan think tanks, vote fraud is all but nonexistent in the United States. Last year, during the post-election controversy caused by the unique vote counting practices adopted by certain swing states, the New York Times summed up the conventional wisdom, “Claims of voter fraud are common. It’s the fraud that’s rare.” It must, therefore, have been vexing for the editors of the Gray Lady to run the following headline last Monday: “Election Workers in Georgia Are Fired for Shredding Voter Registration Forms.” The fired workers had been employed by Fulton County, where questionable election night conduct attracted nationwide attention in 2020.
According to the Times, “The workers, at the Fulton County Board of Elections, were dismissed on Friday after other employees saw them destroying registration forms awaiting processing before local elections in November.” The heavily Democratic county has a well-established reputation for election skullduggery stretching back for decades. This latest scandal was made public when Georgia’s GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the state’s chief election official, issued a press release indicating that his office was investigating the matter. Raffensperger has also requested the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the Fulton County election process pursuant to these latest irregularities:
After 20 years of documented failure in Fulton County elections, Georgians are tired of waiting to see what the next embarrassing revelation will be. The Department of Justice needs to take a long look at what Fulton County is doing and how their leadership disenfranchises Fulton voters through incompetence and malfeasance. The voters of Georgia are sick of Fulton County’s failures.
And it gets worse for those who still insist that vote fraud poses no significant threat to election integrity. They will be less than thrilled with this story, published last Monday, in the Detroit News: “Three Metro Detroit women have been charged with election fraud by Attorney General Dana Nessel in connection to absentee ballot applications and ballots submitted during Michigan’s 2020 general election.” Michigan became the center of considerable controversy in 2020 after Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson sent out unsolicited absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in the state, and illegally instructed election clerks to presume the accuracy of absentee ballot signatures.
These actions, combined with other irregularities involving the refusal to allow election observers access to polling places or the ability to monitor vote counts, prompted the Michigan legislature to pass several measures aimed at improving election integrity. The bills included provisions that would have made it a felony to apply for multiple absentee ballots or to fill out applications for others without their consent. All were passed by both houses of the legislature in lopsided bipartisan votes. Yet, without a blush, Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer summarily vetoed the legislation. The notification letter she sent to the lawmakers recited shopworn Democrat talking points regarding fraud:
I am returning several election-related bills to you without approval. House Bills 4837, 4838, and 4492 attempt to suppress the vote or perpetuate the “Big Lie”: the calculated disinformation campaign to discredit the 2020 election. I will have no part in any effort that grants an ounce of credence to this deception, so injurious to our democracy. The 2020 election was free, secure, and accurate.
Meanwhile, in the City of Brotherly Love, a staffer for Democrat City Councilmember Mark Squilla was charged Tuesday with voter fraud and conspiracy. Philadelphia Magazine reports, “Prosecutors say Marie Beren used her role as a de facto judge of elections in three South Philly voting divisions to cast fraudulent votes for candidates at all levels of government.” According to a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “The allegations against her are tied to a larger case involving former U.S. Rep. Michael ‘Ozzie’ Myers, who rose to prominence during the 1970s Abscam scandal.” The Myers investigation also led to the conviction of Philadelphia election judge Domenick Demuro for padding vote totals.
Such stories notwithstanding, the media studiously downplays vote fraud whenever possible. A textbook example is an Associated Press story about a Wisconsin man charged with felony election fraud on September 23. Beneath the tendentious headline, “4th Wisconsin voter out of 3 million charged with fraud,” its author deploys a logical fallacy readers will recognize as the appeal to ignorance: “Charges of election fraud are exceedingly rare in Wisconsin.” Obviously, a paucity of charges doesn’t prove a shortage of chicanery, but this story isn’t about tiresome evidence. Its point is to perpetuate a false narrative about fraud. Ostensibly nonpartisan think tanks use similar rhetorical tricks to “debunk” fraud:
The Brennan Center, alongside academics and journalists, have investigated claims of voter-impersonation fraud (which happens when an ineligible voter pretends to be an eligible voter at the polls) and found that it almost never happens. A Brennan Center report determined that Americans are more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter-impersonation fraud.
This is a classic straw man. Voter-impersonation at the polls is rarely cited by proponents of election integrity laws. Their most common concerns involve inadequate security for mail-in voting, ballot harvesting by political activists and the proliferation of unmonitored ballot drop boxes in Democrat-controlled precincts. It’s no coincidence that most proven instances of election fraud are committed by Democrats. They need fraud to survive. Without it, their only remaining hope is the unconstitutional “Freedom to Vote Act,” but that bill won’t pass unless Sens. Joe Manchin (D-Wv.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) cave on the filibuster, and the loony left wing of their party seems determined to alienate both.
Democrat vote fraud is a very real and ongoing threat to representative democracy. This is why election integrity laws — which are supported by the vast majority of Americans — are misrepresented by members of their party, their media allies, and partisan think tanks as “voter suppression.” If we want free and fair elections whose results reflect the will of the people, fraud must be eliminated. The only way to accomplish that is for Americans to turn out in unprecedented numbers in 2022 and fire the fraudsters.
