Is voter fraud really a threat?

There are imaginary, illegal and dead voters on our voting rolls, and anyone can just show up and vote under one of those names.

Voter fraud is scary, isn’t it?

It would be even scarier if it were occurring with any sort of frequency.

According to News21, a site where journalism students from around the country work together to report about a changing America, 2,068 cases of voter fraud were reported between 2000 and 2010.

That is about 207 cases a year and an average of only 4.1 cases per state per year.  
To give these numbers some perspective, more than 130 million people voted during the 2008 election. That means voter fraud accounted for about 0.000159 percent of votes that year. 

The issue is a distraction for our electorate, legislature and officials. 

Indiana was one of the first states to pounce on this so-called problem, passing a voter
identification law in 2006. 

Our law requires some form of state-issued ID that displays your photo, your name and an expiration date sometime after the last General Election, and it must be issued by the state of Indiana or the U.S. government.

Luckily for out-of-state IU students, public university IDs count. Private
university IDs do not.

Indiana’s law potentially disenfranchises the poor, minorities, the elderly and out-of-state college students.

This year, Indiana is stepping up its efforts by stationing federal prosecutors at U.S. Attorney’s offices throughout the state. From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., election officials and voters will be able to file allegations of suspected voter fraud or voting rights violations to these prosecutors.

Just like the drafting, deliberating, passing and signing of any voter ID law, this new policy seems like a waste of time and money to us. 

Since voter fraud occurs maybe four times per election per state, couldn’t we just set up a hotline for concerned individuals to call?  Don’t these prosecutors have better things to do than wait around in case someone complains about possible voter fraud?

Our fear of voter fraud is a monster under our beds, a distraction from actual problems our legislatures should be confronting. These laws are a solution without a problem, and they do a better job undermining our democracy than protecting it.

Estimates of potential disenfranchisement range from hundreds of thousands to millions, but even the lowest estimates of disenfranchisement greatly outpace the rate of voter fraud.

No amount of disenfranchisement is worth curbing a problem that barely occurs and is statistically unable to change the outcome of an election. Everyone deserves the right to vote, even if they do not have a photo ID. 

Let’s focus our energy on fixing actual problems.