Debunking 5 Election Fraud Myths

Thanks to a certain presidential candidate claiming that the election is "rigged," voter confidence in the election process is at an all time low. But the reality is that election fraud is actually incredibly rare, which is why anyone doubting the system should check out this Daily Dot article debunking four of the most common election fraud myths. For example:

While Trump is correct that there are 1.8 million dead people are registered as voters, he leaves out one critical fact: None of them actually voted.

So no matter how you plan on voting tomorrow, remember that your vote does count -and imaginary voter fraud isn't going to change it.

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Yes, that is part of what I was saying. Every attempt I've seen to put numbers to voter fraud in the US shows the results were insignificant for non-local elections, meaning it didn't make any difference. We should still strive to reduce that, but much of what has been tried seems, at best, more theater than actual progress. Large efforts to target infrequent occurrences can also easily have costs that far outweigh the benefits.

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That's true, there is voter fraud every year, but it has never made a difference. That's the important thing to keep in mind.

One thing I hate that they left out in the linked article is that the reason so many dead voters are registered is that it's so hard to remove voters from the registry in many states -but it doesn't matter if they're registered so long as they aren't voting and 99.99% of those deceased voters aren't running.

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Voter fraud has been a concern for decades and there have been some rather in depth studies with every major election. But most people won't read hundred page plus reports (I used to, but haven't in a couple years), and news stories have no problem incorrectly summarising them. But every time in my memory, there were people acting like that election was special because their side lost, when fraud has been pretty consistent and insignificant. That is not the same as saying there is no fraud, but it often is in places that aren't close enough to matter, and often nonexistent in close contests that were heavily scrutinized (e.g. Chicago was much, much worse than Florida in 2000). What fraud there is also tends to be of the kind that wouldn't be abated by things like voter ID laws and poll observers.

The vast majority of discussion of voter fraud though seems to be disconnected from any actual data, even if every anctedote is taken at face value. I find it disingenuous when people talk about something as important, yet disregard resources freely available.