Special Report: How a small group of U.S. lawyers pushed voter fraud fears into the mainstream

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-voter-fraud-special-repo/special-report-how-a-small-group-of-us-lawyers-pushed-voter-fraud-fears-into-the-mainstream-idUSKBN2601GZ

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For months, President Donald Trump has tried to convince Americans that the Nov. 3 election will be “rigged,” claiming without evidence that mail voting will open the door to mass cheating.

“The greatest Election Fraud in our history is about to happen,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Aug. 23.

In making these claims, Trump has seized upon the idea that U.S. elections are vulnerable to rampant fraud. That once-fringe theory has become a staple of Republican politics, due largely to the efforts of a small network of lawyers who have promoted it for two decades, funded by right-wing foundations.

This year, the Trump campaign and the Republican Party have cited concerns about voter fraud in a nationwide legal battle with Democrats and voting-rights advocates over election procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic. These lawyers have played an important role, arguing for restrictions on mail-in voting in the closely-watched states of Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.

Four nonprofits run by or linked to this network of lawyers – the Public Interest Legal Foundation, the American Constitutional Rights Union, Judicial Watch and True the Vote - have been involved in at least 61 lawsuits over election rules since 2012, according to a Reuters examination. More than half have been initiated since Trump took office in 2017, including 11 cases concerning absentee or mail-in voting.

*snip*

[underpants]

1. It's been a topic in MSM since the 2000 theft

I guess that was part of how they spread it.

[Claire Oh Nette]

2. Hit them with Facts

"The Brennan Center’s seminal report on this issue, The Truth About Voter Fraud, found that most reported incidents of voter fraud are actually traceable to other sources, such as clerical errors or bad data matching practices. The report reviewed elections that had been meticulously studied for voter fraud, and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent.

A comprehensive 2014 study published in The Washington Post found 31 credible instances of impersonation fraud from 2000 to 2014, out of more than 1 billion ballots cast. Even this tiny number is likely inflated, as the study’s author counted not just prosecutions or convictions, but any and all credible claims.

Two studies done at Arizona State University, one in 2012 and another in 2016, found similarly negligible rates of impersonation fraud. The project found 10 cases of voter impersonation fraud nationwide from 2000-2012. The follow-up study, which looked for fraud specifically in states where politicians have argued that fraud is a pernicious problem, found zero successful prosecutions for impersonation fraud in five states from 2012-2016."

The ones I recall from recent elections involve...GOP in Iowa and WV.

[link:https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debunking-voter-fraud-myth|