The Hype Over Voter Fraud

Steven Carbó
August 23, 2005

Steven Carbó is director of Demos ' Democracy Program. This piece originally appeared in a Demos Democracy Dispatch.

Sometimes, when something is repeated often enough, it takes on the ring of truth.

That's the way it is with allegations of voter fraud. The myth has circulated for so long—decades, in fact—that for many people, it has moved from hypothesis to fact. Despite a massive void of evidence, the charges of widespread fraud perpetrated by individuals, or groups of individual voters, persist. In fact, they have become a major communications and lobbying tool in the arsenal of the right.

In the months since the November 2004 election, conservative ideologues and their partisan allies have harnessed voter fraud allegations as a powerful "new" weapon against the American people and our ability to have a political voice. Misleading accounts of illegal voting—involving identity theft, double voting, and voting by people with felony convictions—are increasingly reported as fact in the mainstream press, partisan blogs and political debates. To meet their goal of advancing election policy that restricts access to the ballot box, conservatives have devised a simple strategy: imposing strict new voter identification proposals on an unwitting electorate.