A close look at voter fraud

What does voter fraud look like?  

It looks like one-off screw-ups by careless people. 

The president, and tens of millions of Republican voters, believe that the 2020 election experienced massive voter fraud. 

Some of this fraud allegedly was software designed to switch votes for president--but not other offices--in multiple jurisdictions. No evidence of this has been found by people highly skilled and motivated to find it.

Coordinated conspiracies involving thousands of people at the federal, state, county, and precinct level, all working together--in total secret--is implausible on its face. But individual election crime is not, because it happens.

https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/#choose-a-state

Let's examine actual cases.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative research and advocacy group, publishes a list of voter fraud cases and prosecutions. With that lead, one easily finds contemporaneous news stories about local and state prosecutions, along with the back story and ultimate disposition for those cases and others.

Oregon, which has universal vote-by-mail, the system most susceptible to fraud according to President Trump, has had a Republican Secretary of State for the past four years. The Heritage Foundation site lists five prosecutions in Oregon. The first prosecution listed, for Betty Clark, led to a newspaper story in the Oregonian newspaper that listed her prosecution and several others. Betty Clark, age 76, lived briefly in Vancouver, Washington to care for her elderly father. She registered to vote there and received a ballot in the mail. She voted in Washington. After her father died she and her husband moved back to her home in Baker City, Oregon where a ballot from her previous Oregon registration was waiting. She voted again, a crime. A written record of both votes was readily available to prosecutors.

On her behalf, her attorney claimed she had completely forgotten having voted once already. "It was an innocent mistake. There was no criminal intent whatsoever," he argued. She was originally charged with a felony, but in a plea bargain the charge was lowered to "voting when not entitled."

Another case described in contemporaneous news reports was a college student from Medford attending school in Colorado, where she registered and voted by mail.  Her parents mailed her the Oregon ballot sent to her Medford address, which she also cast. She claimed no memory of having voted twice. She escaped prison, but was fined $250.

Marjory Gale of Hood River cast by mail both her own ballot and the ballot of her daughter, who was away at college. This demonstrated criminal intent. She was eligible for a prison sentence, but also escaped with a fine, here of $750.

Mail ballots leave documentary evidence. In Oregon there were ten convictions for improper voting behavior in the 2016 election, with 14 others being investigated, out of the 1.8 million total votes, according to the Secretary of State's office.  Click: Oregonlive.com

A pattern emerges. In an allegedly highly vulnerable all-mail-balloting state, in the contentious 2016 general election, voter fraud cases happened, extremely rarely. They were random and un-coordinated. 

Swing state Wisconsin had a Republican governor and secretary of state. Wisconsin experienced contentious races involving the recall of Scott Walker, the embattled Republican governor. The Heritage Foundation listed 14 cases in Wisconsin through the multiple elections back to 2014. The most recent case involved Peggy West, whose crime was not voter-fraud at all. She falsified signatures on her petition for candidacy for a local office. 

The prior person on the Heritage Foundation list, Troy Schiller, voted twice, once each in two nearby towns, a crime with clear intent. The local news story quotes him saying he "made a careless decision" because he was "too much caught up in talk radio." His crime was punishable by three-and-a-half years in prison. The local prosecutor asked for only 90 days in jail, saying the felony conviction on his record would haunt him for life, a serious punishment itself. Click: Grand Rapids Tribune  

Shiller's story links to another one, in which Jan Martinez, who was on probation for an earlier crime of driving under the influence, registered to vote saying she was not then currently serving a sentence. Wisconsin law defines her probation status as serving a sentence, making her ineligible to vote, something Martinez said she misunderstood. Her voter registration was a felony, eligible for three-and-a-half years in prison. 

Rod Monroe

Robert Monroe, a Milwaukee area health insurance executive, arranged to vote 12 times in five different elections in 2011 and 2012, using the name of his son, and his son's girlfriend, and his own. He is a strong partisan in support of Scott Walker. The Monroe case became rich fodder. Wisconsin Democrats used the incident to document that Republicans cheat on elections. Republicans used the incident to say it showed we needed stronger voter-ID laws. He claimed he voted multiple times due to a childhood trauma, including abuse by Catholic priests resulting in a "fugue state" so he had no memory of the multiple votes. He was sentenced to a year of incarceration. 

Wisconsin Public Radio recently reported that in the previous four and a half years, going back to the 2016 elections, municipal clerks across the state referred a total of 238 possible election fraud cases that required further investigation.  Click  

In the 2018 mid-term election the Wisconsin Election Commission, the state agency responsible for investigating potential election fraud, found just 24 cases amid the 2.7 million votes cast. The Wisconsin State Journal reported:

     "The commission documented 24 cases of suspected fraud, such as people reportedly voting twice in an election, felons casting ballots, a voter no longer residing at his or her registered address or, in one case, a non-citizen reportedly voting. Other cases involved voters on an ineligible list trying to cast a ballot as well as a deceased voter’s absentee ballot being counted." Click

Included in those incidents of fraud were votes by ineligible 17-year-olds due to confusion caused by neighboring-state Illinois' rule that allows 17-year-olds to vote in congressional and presidential primaries if they are 18 by the time of the general election. That is not the law in Wisconsin, but in some Wisconsin counties the 17-turning-18 youth were wrongly allowed to vote by the county clerks. Those votes were illegal. No teenagers were prosecuted. 

In Wisconsin voter fraud convictions put people at risk of a $10,000 fine and three and a half years in prison.

Summary: In Wisconsin as in Oregon, a pattern emerges. Voter frauds—as actually experienced--are the mistakes and misbehavior of rare individuals, acting alone, foolishly or maliciously. It looks more like sloppiness and petty larceny than it does like a coup d'etat. The rules regarding voter eligibility are complex, and sometimes people run afoul of them. State and local officials are vigilant for it. Voters and votes are tracked and they leave documentation of their crimes. People get prosecuted. 

It has serious consequences for the criminal. It doesn't have a material effect on the election.