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Adinnieken on 25 September 2012
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Kasz216 said:
Adinnieken said:
The problem with voter ID fraud is that it doesn't exist as widespread as people believe.

In actuality, voter ID fraud occurs 1/10th of 1% of the time. If 50% of the US population voted, that would mean 15,000 instances of voter ID fraud happened. That's 300 instances in every state.

The question is, should we enact laws that disenfranchise some voters because we're afraid of an election hinging on 300 votes?

Maybe what needs to happen is we look at what each state does, identify what works well and what doesn't, and change laws nationally to fix inequities. But right now, the biggest problem with voter ID fraud is the perception that it happens far more often than reality has proven it does.

No.  The problem with voter fraud is that nobody tracks it.

As shown by that video just showed 100 random cases in one county, in one state when someone bothered to look.  Just by looking at people who got dismissed from jury duty by saying they weren't a US citizen.

Voter fraud is hard to catch, hard to track, and largely seen as not worth the time checking... because your spending thousands on one vote.

Voter fraud statistics like yours are fraudelent.

My statistic is based on data from a report that Republicans did.  In an effort to prove how prevalent voter ID fraud is, a Republican group commissioned a report on voter ID fraud.  The results were less damning than they believed it would have been.

Just because voter ID fraud is possible, doesn't mean it happens as much as is possible.  Credit card fraud is very difficult, but happens more prevalently because there is a monetary benefit to committing credit card fraud.  There isn't generally a monetary benefit to voter fraud, and when there is, it can happen.  There were several instances of voter ID fraud with individuals who were compensated for registering voters.  Outside of that, it doesn't happen as much as the perception of it happening. 

As an example, there was actually more voter ID fraud by Republicans in Ohio during the last two elections, despite the fact that Republicans have been pushing for voter ID laws that have a greater impact on voters identified with Democrats. 

If you talked to Republicans, their perception is akin to what happened in Russia where a greater percentage of people voted for Putin than existed in the polling place.  The reality is that it actually happens much less than the perception.  Significantly less.

Again, I think there is an inequity in the laws each state maintains and this inequity may create the the perception that is more possible in some states than in others.  So, in my opinion we should be working to fix the inequities first before we enact new laws.