The  NY Times Tea Party story about MN and voter fraud again raises issues about it prevalence or incidence.  Approximately 46 cases in Hennepin County are being considered for prosecution.

Do the math:

2,921,147 total statewide turnout in 2008

665,485 total Hennepin County turnout in 2008

Assume all 46 voter fraud referrals turn into convictions.

46/2,921,147 =0.000015%

46/665,485 =0.000069%

Lorraine’s book should be excellent. My two articles from a couple of years ago draw on her research and reach similar conclusions.

FYI:

http://www.wmitchell.edu/lawreview/documents/2.Schultz.pdf

The Myth of Voter Fraud

http://www.hlpronline.com/Schultz_HLPR.pdf

Lies, Damn Lies, and Voter Ids

>>> "Frank Askin" <faskin@kinoy.rutgers.edu> 10/27/10 10:46 AM >>>
I concur with Margaret. Lori is also my expert witness as I prepare to
challenge advance voter registration as a violation of the right to vote
in the New Jersey Constitution. FRANK




Prof. Frank Askin
Distinguished Professor of Law and Director
Constitutional Litigation Clinic
Rutgers Law School/Newark
(973) 353-5687>>> Margaret Groarke <margaret.groarke@manhattan.edu>
10/27/2010 11:01 AM >>>
Recent media attention to allegations of voter fraud and the
re-emergence of
"voter integrity" campaigns, reminds me to draw the attention of the
list to
Lorraine C. Minnite's recent book, *The Myth of Voter Fraud,
*(Cornell,
2010). Lori has done an excellent job demonstrating the rarity of
deliberate
voter fraud in the United States, and exposing the political
motivations for
allegations of it.

Here is a description from the Cornell University Press webpage:

THE MYTH OF VOTER FRAUD
Lorraine C.
Minnite<http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_listsearch.taf?author_first=Lorraine%20C%2E%20Minnite>


$29.95s cloth
2010, 312 pages, 6.125 x 9.25, 3 charts/graphs, 20 tables
ISBN: 978-0-8014-4848-5
Allegations that widespread voter fraud is threatening to the integrity
of
American elections and American democracy itself have intensified since
the
disputed 2000 presidential election. The claim that elections are
being
stolen by illegal immigrants and unscrupulous voter registration
activists
and vote buyers has been used to persuade the public that voter
malfeasance
is of greater concern than structural inequities in the ways votes are
gathered and tallied, justifying ever tighter restrictions on access to
the
polls. Yet, that claim is a myth.

In The Myth of Voter Fraud, Lorraine C. Minnite presents the results of
her
meticulous search for evidence of voter fraud. She concludes that
while
voting irregularities produced by the fragmented and complex nature of
the
electoral process in the United States are common, incidents of
deliberate
voter fraud are actually quite rare. Based on painstaking research
aggregating and sifting through data from a variety of sources,
including
public records requests to all fifty state governments and the U.S.
Justice
Department, Minnite contends that voter fraud is in reality a
politically
constructed myth intended to further complicate the voting process and
reduce voter turnout. She refutes several high-profile charges of
alleged
voter fraud, such as the assertion that eight of the 9/11 hijackers
were
registered to vote, and makes the question of voter fraud more precise
by
distinguishing fraud from the manifold ways in which electoral
democracy can
be distorted. Effectively disentangling misunderstandings and
deliberate
distortions from reality, The Myth of Voter Fraud provides rigorous
empirical evidence for those fighting to make the electoral process
more
efficient, more equitable, and more democratic.
Reviews
"This book is a must-read for anyone concerned with voter fraud in
twenty-first-century America. Lorraine C. Minnite defines voter fraud
so as
to allow the careful, systematic investigation of the subject she
reports in
this volume. I highly recommend it."—Chandler Davidson, editor,
Minority
Vote Dilution

"This is the first systematic—and convincing—answer to the
decade-long
campaign by Republican ideologues, the Wall St. Journal, and, for a
time,
the U.S. Department of Justice, to create what Lorraine C. Minnite
rightly
calls 'the myth of voter fraud.' This myth feeds the ongoing partisan
efforts in states throughout the country to adopt 'voter
identification'
laws, which have the effect of disproportionately disfranchising
minorities
and the aged. Minnite's gracefully written book, brimming with
fascinating
stories and trenchant analysis, provides a clear-eyed, factual
background
for this major public policy debate. If you want to go beyond slogans
and
fantasies on vote fraud, this is the place to start."—J. Morgan
Kousser,
author of Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing
of
the Second Reconstruction
About the AuthorLorraine C. Minnite is Assistant Professor of
Political
Science at Barnard College and a Senior Fellow at Demos. She is
coauthor of
Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American
Voters.



--
Margaret Groarke
Director, Peace Studies Program
Associate Professor, Government
Manhattan College
4513 Manhattan College Parkway
Bronx, NY 10471

718-862-7943 (office)


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