[EL] Vote fraud -- evidence vs. belief

Sat Jul 21 05:22:47 PDT 2012

I will concur with Brad on the point of saying the the public is badly
informed on so many points and that so much of our policy and political
debate is poorly informed by good (social) scientific evidence. 
DellaCarpini and Keeter in WHAT AMERICANS DON'T KNOW ABOUT POLITICS well
captures this point.  Too much of what goes for political and policy
debate in this country seems more captured by ideology and myth than by
facts.  Sadly, as one of the first members of this listserv years ago, I
 have witnessed the debate here degenerate in the same direction.  So
much of the listserv is political positioning or Trojan Horses for
parties, positions, and litigation that I often feel that I feel the
dialogue here has been captured by same interest groups and ideologies
that exist in our society.

I half-kid with my students and say the world is divided between those
who believe there was a second shooter in 1963 and those who do not.  I
am of the latter.  

For anyone who wants to read about my latest thoughts on paranoid and
il-informed politics, please see:

The Paranoid Style of Michele Bachmann

http://schultzstake.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-paranoid-style-of-michele-bachmann.html

I note two wonderful quotes here.

“In my opinion the State Department, which is one of the most important
government departments, is thoroughly infested with communists.”
    *Senator Joseph McCarthy, 1950.

“Information has recently come to light that raises serious questions
about Department of State policies and activities that appear to be a
result of influence operations conducted by individuals and
organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.”
    *Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, 2012.

David Schultz, Professor
Editor, Journal of Public Affairs Education (JPAE)
Hamline University
School of Business
570 Asbury Street
Suite 308
St. Paul, Minnesota 55104
651.523.2858 (voice)
651.523.3098 (fax)
http://davidschultz.efoliomn.com/
http://works.bepress.com/david_schultz/
http://schultzstake.blogspot.com/
Twitter:  @ProfDSchultz
Named one of the inaugural 2012 FacultyRow SuperProfessors

>>> "Smith, Brad"  07/21/12 6:55 AM >>>
In recent years it has become a bit of a liberal parlor game to take
polls of conservatives to show their "shockingly ignorant and
conspiratorial beliefs" on various issues. This is not a game, however,
that people on either side should want to play.

Why? Because those of us who deal regularly with public opinion and
knowledge, as many on this list do, know that the public has "shockingly
ignorant and conspiratorial" beliefs on an amazing array of subjects,
and that this is not limited to either side of the spectrum. For
example, one poll found that 35 percent of Democrats believe that the
Bush Administration knew of 9/11 in advance (only 39% disagreed).
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/bush_administration/22_believe_bush_knew_about_9_11_attacks_in_advance
. In fact, polls have long shown that Republicans tend to be better
informed than Democrats about political issues (see one of the most
recent examples here:
http://www.people-press.org/2012/04/11/what-the-public-knows-about-the-political-parties/#partisan-differences-in-knowledge),
which I mention only to point out how silly Mr. Adler's comments are,
not how well-informed Republicans are.

The voter ID debate is a very sad debate for me to watch, because I
think the people who ought to be opinion leaders have, and again I'm
referring to both sides, put out lots of bad information and rhetoric
about the issue - the extent of voter fraud on one hand, the impact of
ID laws on voting on the other.

BTW, significant minorities aren't terribly well informed on many
non-political matters, too: for example, a 1999 Gallup poll found that
18% of Americans throught that the sun revolved around the earth. But to
our credit, we did better than the Germans and the Brits on the
question.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/3742/new-poll-gauges-americans-general-knowledge-levels.aspx.

Bradley A. Smith
Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault
   Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
303 E. Broad St.
Columbus, OH 43215
614.236.6317
http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Ben Adler
[benadler1 at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2012 6:25 PM
To: Scarberry, Mark
Cc: Election law list
Subject: Re: [EL] Vote fraud -- evidence vs. belief

"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."

I am so sick of conservative intellectuals pretending that the vast
majority of actual conservatives, with their shockingly ignorant and
conspiratorial beliefs, don't exist, so as to dispense with any need to
defend actual conservatism as opposed to your idealized version of it.
If no conservative you know has any difficulty believing Obama received
more votes McCain, then either you don't know many conservatives, or the
ones you know are an extraordinarily unrepresentative sample. Here's
some actual data, as opposed to your anecdotal assertion:

According to a 2009 Public Policy Polling survey, a majority (52%) of
Republicans believe that ACORN stole the 2008 election on behalf of
Obama. See here:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/poll-gop-base-thinks-obama-didnt-actually-win-2008-election----acorn-stole-it.php

If you've watched Fox News or listened to right wing talk radio over the
last few years, you'll know why this is. But I suppose you would say you
don't know any conservatives who watch Fox News or listen to Rush
Limbaugh either. 

On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 3:46 PM, Scarberry, Mark
<Mark.Scarberry at pepperdine.edu> wrote:
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
www.law.buffalo.edu
Papers at http://ssrn.com/author=40126

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Ben AdlerContributing Writer, The Nation
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