[EL] Vote fraud -- evidence vs. belief

[Scarberry, Mark]

In response to Jim: Conservatives generally have no problem believing that people may act foolishly for various reasons. Conservatives tend to have a more realistic view of human nature than do some liberals. Conservatives  may believe it is foolish for people to support liberal policies, but conservatives generally are quite willing to believe that people do so in large numbers. No conservative that I know has any difficulty believing that a majority of voters in New York, for example, vote for candidates who support liberal policies, or that President Obama received more votes than Sen. McCain. Conservatives also think that there are a lot of people who benefit from a large government who are likely to vote in favor of govt expansion. Conservatives are not at all surprised, for example, that a lot of government workers would do so. Whether or not that is a foolish decision depends on the factors that it may be reasonable for people to take into account in voting.

With regard to real reasons why at least some people who support voter ID laws do so: There is a concern that fraud may occur in the future. Perhaps it is analogous to the fear that electronic voting systems may be hacked so as to change voting results. Even if there is no evidence that it has occurred, there is a system vulnerability that can reasonably be considered in deciding what action may be appropriate, in part to prevent the vulnerability from being exploited and in part to help assure voters that the system has integrity.

Discussions on this list have persuaded me that there is little current voting fraud that would be prevented by voter ID laws, and that there should be more concern about absentee voting, voting by mail, and new Internet voting systems. I also have an innate distrust of non-transparent systems like electronic voting and would prefer that we use paper ballots that can be recounted manually. That does not mean that it is unreasonable to take into account other  vulnerabilities of the system that could be exploited in the future. Explanations about why voter ID laws are not needed or helpful to address a potential vulnerability will be more persuasive than data showing a lack of current fraud that would be prevented by voter ID laws.

Mark S. Scarberry
Professor of Law
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Jim Gardner
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2012 12:08 PM
To: Election law list
Subject: [EL] Vote fraud -- evidence vs. belief

The lack of evidence to support charges of vote fraud raises a more interesting and profound question: Why do people continue to believe in it?  The answer, it seems to me, has nothing to do with evidence – so arguing about the evidence is probably a waste of time – and a lot to do with culture, specifically the culture of contemporary politics.

I think the problem here is that many on the right have managed to convince themselves that it is impossible – literally impossible – for people in any kind of numbers to support liberal policies.  Since people can’t possibly support such policies, they can’t possibly vote for liberal candidates.  Consequently, if liberal candidates win, it can only be the result of fraud because nobody could actually vote for such people.

This problem is cultural.  It reveals a very sad fact about our current politics, namely that the views, beliefs, and experiences of other human beings are so completely dismissed and devalued in some quarters that many find it impossible to take seriously the possibility that their fellow citizens could actually hold certain views (much less actually take those views seriously or engage with them on the merits).

I hasten to add that the political valence does not always run in the same direction.  For example, the “What’s the Matter with Kansas” analysis holds that working class voters couldn’t possibly support candidates who support policies that disadvantage them economically, although proponents of this view explain it by brainwashing rather than vote fraud.  But this explanation doesn’t take seriously the possibility that social and symbolically resonant issues could actually be more important than economic ones to some segments of the population.

Until we start taking each other seriously as political agents, we’re not going to extract ourselves from the current impasse.

Jim

________________________________
James A. Gardner
Joseph W. Belluck and Laura L. Aswad
  SUNY Distinguished Professor of Civil Justice
SUNY Buffalo Law School
The State University of New York
Room 316, O'Brian Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260-1100
voice: 716-645-3607
fax: 716-645-5968
e-mail: jgard at buffalo.edu<mailto:jgard at buffalo.edu>
www.law.buffalo.edu<http://www.law.buffalo.edu>
Papers at http://ssrn.com/author=40126
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