Voter Fraud - The Art of Distraction

Unfair barriers to voting -- that's what the Voting Rights Act was in opposition to, that's what the Freedom Summer was working against and that's what we threw out the door 93 years ago with the Grandfather Clause.

In the last year, there was much pointing and shouting about people without documents participating in our democracy unlawfully -- voting when they have no right. The Right would have us believe that we have an epidemic problem of illegal voting and that making it more difficult to vote will be a benefit to democracy. History shows that their true intention is not to create a safer process but to keep power in the hands of the white elite.

Cascade Policy Institute (CPI), a rightwing think tank based in Oregon, asserts that there is a severe problem of voter fraud in this state and that our rules need to be restricted so that it is more difficult to vote, and as a result more difficult to cheat the elections system. (CPI - Jeff Alan)

Oregonians for Immigration Reform (OFIR) and other anti-immigrant organizations have already begun to grab onto 'Voter Fraud' as a tactic. In 2008, OFIR was one of the primary advocates of a ballot measure that sought to implement stricter laws around registering because of the threat of undocumented immigrants voting.

However, both these organizations are simply wrong about voter fraud. Many studies conclude that incidents of voter fraud are shockingly low.

“Impersonation fraud is highly unlikely and exceedingly rare.” (The Truth about Voter Fraud) An average of 8 people per year are convicted or plead guilty to committing voter fraud in national election (the most participatory elections.) (Project Vote)

CPI reported that in Umatilla County, Oregon there are 6 voters (actually 5 as one was a numerical error -- which, by the way, is an 18% error rate) still on the roles but legally dead, according to the state. These 6 were mailed a ballot, none of those 5 ballots of the dead were returned. (Jeff Alan)

CPI's prescription for dealing with illegal voting is to fundamentally change the nature of our voter registration in Oregon to say that if you don't vote for two federal elections than your registration would be kicked out. (CPI)

This is a mistake not because it couldn't be logical but because that would be yet another barrier to participation. I can understand CPI's concern that we don't want any dead people voting; I don't either. But if we are to take their concern at face value compared with the facts; the argument is just silly.

What is not at all silly is having the most accessible democracy possible -- not to the point of naivety but to the point of accepting 5 dead folks who don't turn in ballots on the rolls if it means that we all get to stay registered to vote without contest. As a matter of principle, it shouldn’t (and currently doesn’t) matter if you are a terribly lazy voter, inactive or only care about school board elections that happen on mid-term years -- you should be allowed to stay on the rolls until you are ready to come off.

So, considering their weak arguments, what is it that OFIR and CPI really want? Because, however minor this might seem, what is at stake is fair and open elections in a country that has long been known to corrupt the system to maintain white power whenever possible. Exclusion is inevitable in narrowing the system, there are always going to be those left out -- that is, actually, the point. That exclusion is what permits white supremacy to reign and power to be kept in the hands of the few.

OFIR and CPI are part of a long history of nativists using allegations of voting fraud to maintain white power (if not primarily elite power) in the government. Each time there has been a notable expansion of the right to vote, such as the Voting Rights Act and it’s renewal in 2008, the threat from the Radical Right has been that it will increase fraud. When we see dramatic efforts to register people to vote in registration drives of people or color and the poor, the same claims surface. These allegations are based in keeping the voting system, the system that supposedly chooses leaders and enables policy, closed to those that are historically disenfranchised. (Politics of Voter Fraud)

It is not particularly a surprise that the newest targets are immigrants. OFIR’s primary public rationale during the 2008 ballot season for harsher voting restrictions was because “Illegal immigrants are taking advantage of a lax system." Their campaign was not about democracy or accessible government or fairness. Illegal voting was a red herring (although I’m sure OFIR believes that threat in their heart); this was about keeping electoral politics as closed as possible to keep the existing power structure in place. OFIR’s voter campaign was fear mongering amongst the white working-class community to continue their stoking of the anti-immigrant fires.

While these campaigns to restrict registration and voting rights might appear based in democratic principles of fairness to common eyes, they are insidious. These initiatives conveniently overlook the reality that poor, elderly, rural folks and people of color have many similar issues around valid identification as undocumented people.

“In some cases, people may have never been issued a birth certificate because they were born at home and their birth was not officially registered. A particular problem exists for a large number of elderly African Americans because they were born in a time when racial discrimination in hospital admissions, especially in the South, as well as poverty, kept their mothers from giving birth at a hospital. One study estimated that about one in five African Americans born in the 1939-40 period lack a birth certificate because of these problems.”(S. Shapiro) African Americans, senior citizens and those living in rural areas are more likely to lack birth certificates or passports and would be more strongly affected (than white, urban and young). (L. Ku)

Restricting their access via collateral damage with these initiatives does not appear to be a concern to OFIR. The fact that groups like OFIR are unconcerned about the true victims of restrictive voting – primarily rural and older black folks -- outs them as not even just anti-immigrant but as white supremacist.

While Cascade Policy Institute is not specifically addressing undocumented people voting, they have aligned themselves with OFIR. CPI regularly published opinion columns that intend to drive wedges between legal immigrants, the working poor, 'taxpayers' and undocumented folks. Even going so far as to profile an immigrant who got caught up in an awful loophole in the immigration system and using her story to make hyperbolic statements about "illegals" in general. "Jasmin is not one of the many illegal residents in the U.S. relying on government aid. She immigrated not for financial assistance, but to pursue her dreams." We see where CPI stands. What is telling though, are the comments attached to this column -- readers won't stand for this columnist rhetoric or logic. Of the 8 posted comments, most of them argue that this woman in an unfortunate situation caught in bureaucracy and deportation does not deserve our effort or sympathy either.

Voting as an act might well be a small gesture but it represents the idealism of our democracy and, in fact, is the foundation of the notion that we are all equal in choosing our leaders and decision makers. Keeping elections and voting as open, transparent and accessible as possible does not breed fraud but something more terrifying to nativists – it breeds power for the poor, working class, people of color and immigrants.

There are better systems available to us to develop the most participatory and active democracy possible -- even better than what we have. Stay tuned to the second segment of this two-part series: Residency Voting.