With the midterm election less than a week away, the legacy press and Democrats have kicked up a familiar narrative: there’s no such thing as “voter fraud,” and anyone claiming otherwise (particularly President Trump, or anyone connected to him) is a conspiracy theorist. It’s been a full-court press, but I think these headlines from Washington Post, CNN, and MS Now, taken together, capture the sentiment well.
It’s a regular refrain. For years, the legacy press has treated the idea that there are votes cast by people who aren’t allowed to vote as nonsense:
But beyond political spin, the substance of the claim — that there is no such thing as people voting in American elections who aren’t legally allowed to do so — is simply, substantively false. Every election brings with it fraudulent votes — there's a whole database here. Since previous administrations rarely pursued and prosecuted illegal voting — something the Trump administration has changed — what we know about the problem is likely the tip of the iceberg. Take for example the news out of New Jersey back in July. Thousands of noncitizens were registered to vote in error. New Jersey’s governor blamed the problem on a “software error.” The vendor accused of said error points the blame back at the state, which it says was responsible for vetting and verifying voting records. Regardless of who screwed up, nearly 400 illegitimate votes were cast, by the state’s own admission. A grand jury indicted ten people for illegal voting in Minnesota last month. Multiple people were indicted in Los Angeles county earlier this week for illegal voting. These are far from the only cases of these types of errors.
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