Are Democrats More Likely To Commit Vote Fraud Than Republicans?Nearly all informed political observers would say yes.  In his book on vote fraud, John Fund is apologetic about mentioning that, because he wants to make a general argument.  Here’s how he begins the discussion:

A note about partisanship: Since Democrats figure prominently in the vast majority of examples of election fraud described in this book, some readers will jump to the conclusion that this is a one-sided attack on a single party.  I do not believe Republicans are inherently more virtuous or honest than anyone else in politics, and I myself often vote Libertarian or independent.

He then notes that Republicans have had less chance to commit vote fraud because they controlled fewer “local and administrative offices”.  (Though Republicans have, as recently as the 1980s, sometimes used intimidation tactics that are certainly unethical, though perhaps not illegal.)   Fund then makes a more general argument:

In their book, Dirty Little Secrets, Larry Sabato and co-author Glenn Simpson of the Wall Street Journal noted another factor in why Republican election fraud is less common.   Republican base voters are middle-class and not easily induced to commit fraud, while “the pool of people who appear to be available and more vulnerable to an invitation to participate in vote fraud tend to lean Democratic.”  Some liberal activists that Sabato and Simpson interviewed even partly justified fraudulent electoral behavior on the grounds that because the poor and dispossessed have so little political clout, “extraordinary measures (for example, stretching the absentee ballot or registration rules) are required to compensate.”  Paul Herrnson, director of the Center for American Politics at the University of Maryland, agrees that “most incidents of wide-scale vote fraud reportedly occur in inner cities, which are largely populated by minority groups.”

Democrats are far more skilled at encouraging poor people — who need money — to participate in shady vote-buying schemes.  “I had no choice.  I was hungry that day,” Thomas Felder told the Miami Herald in explaining why he illegally voted in the Suarez-Carollo mayoral election.  “You wanted money, you were told who to vote for.”  A former Democratic congressman gave me this explanation of why voting irregularities more often crop up in his party’s back yard.  “When many Republicans lose an election, they go back into what they call the private sector.  When many Democrats lose an election, they lose power and money.  They need to eat, and people will do an awful lot in order to eat.”

(Sabato is a Democrat; I don’t know about Simpson or Herrnson.)

So Democrats are more likely to commit vote fraud because more of their adherents are poor enough to be bribable, because some activists will cross the line to help the poor, and because many Democratic politicians have no good alternative to public office.

These points are, as I said at the beginning, not something most informed observers would quarrel with.  But I think, before going farther, that I should make it clear how far my argument goes.  That more Democrats commit vote fraud than Republicans does not mean that most Democrats commit vote fraud.  I am sure that very few Democrats commit vote fraud in fact — but even fewer Republicans.

Some readers will prefer direct evidence to the conclusions of experts, however well informed.  I have that, too.  I do not know of a single major Republican vote fraud scandal in the last ten years.  But it is easy to find major Democratic scandals in such cities as Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Milwaukee, and New Orleans.  You may recall one example from Milwaukee; in 2000, a Democratic socialite was caught exchanging cigarettes for the votes of the homeless.  (She’s still an honored member of the Democratic party, by the way.)

(The 1998 Miami vote fraud scandal during the mayoralty race between Xavier Suarez and Joe Carollo is hard to classify by party.  Carrollo is and was a Republican.  At that time Suarez, who received many fraudulent votes, was an independent, though he has belonged to both parties.)

Democrats are the guilty in most of the smaller vote scandals, too.  I have started collecting these as they are reported.  Here are examples of vote fraud, or charges of vote fraud in San Francisco, East Chicago, Passaic, New Jersey, Orlando, Florida, South Dakota, New York and Florida, Cleveland, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, and Pennsylvania., Nevada, New Mexico, Orange County, California, and Kentucky.  Of these cases, only the Nevada case was purely Republican.  (A former employee of a Republican firm charged that some Democratic registrations collected by the firm had been discarded.  I don’t know whether the case has gone to trial.)  The Kentucky case appears to have been bipartisan, though I did not make that clear in my post.

When vote fraud is detected, those caught are nearly always Democrats.  Either Democrats are much less skillful at fraud, which seems implausible to me, or they commit far more of it, just as the experts say.

Some Democratic leaders have tolerated vote fraud fairly openly, including Bill Clinton, when he was governor of Arkansas.   (Some believe that the rush by the Clinton administration to get new citizens in 2000 was part of an effort to stuff the ballot box, something I did not mention in the post.  It was certainly true that, under pressure for Clinton and Al Gore, the INS skipped many checks on would-be citizens in 2000.)

Finally, Democratic leaders behave as if they believe more Democrats commit vote fraud.   Nearly always, when the two parties split on election rules, the Republicans want more checks on fraud and the Democrats want fewer.  The infamous 1993 “Motor Voter” Act, which did so much to make fraud easier was opposed almost entirely by Republicans and had been vetoed by the first President Bush.  I don’t say that all supporters of the legislation (including Washington’s Maria Cantwell) even knew that it would make vote fraud easier, but some of them did.  Like the anonymous liberal activists, they see some fraud as a reasonable price for getting more representation for the victim groups they identify with.

It is telling, I think, that there is one group, military voters, for whom Democrats tend to prefer tougher rules and the Republicans easier rules.  Military voters generally back Republicans, at least in recent years.  That Democratic leaders prefer rules that make cheating easier (for everyone except military voters) is understandable if they think they gain from the cheating, but hard to explain otherwise.

(This is the promised follow-up to an earlier post outlining distributed vote fraud.   In that earlier post, I left for another time this explanation for my belief that Democrats are more likely to commit vote fraud.)

Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics. Posted by Jim Miller at January 12, 2005 12:59 PM |

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