Republicans and the Myth of Election Fraud

In recent years Republicans in state legislatures have expressed grave concern about voter fraud as they presented a “solution” of tough voter ID laws and other restrictions that deprive low-income and minority voters of the ballot. Many of these voter-suppression measures have become law despite clear evidence that voter fraud is practically nonexistent.

Recently, though, a fraud case did arise — though it wasn’t exactly the kind that Republicans have so loudly warned about.

Last week, around the time when Donald J. Trump was in Iowa, the Des Moines police arrested a resident named Terri Lynn Rote on suspicion of voter fraud, a Class D felony in Iowa. Apparently persuaded by Mr. Trump’s rhetoric that the “system is rigged,” Ms. Rote, the police said, cast ballots for Mr. Trump at two early voting sites.

In Florida, another crucial swing state where Mr. Trump has fumed about a vast conspiracy to rig the election against him, a poll worker in Miami, Gladys Coego, was accused of illegally marking ballots on behalf of a Republican mayoral candidate. She has also been arrested.

Few issues that have emerged in this election have received closer review by federal courts than voting. Over three years ago, when my home state, North Carolina, passed an expansive voter-suppression bill, we sued the governor to expose the myth of voter fraud. Ultimately, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, in N.A.A.C.P. v. McCrory, that there was almost no evidence of voter fraud in modern United States elections (the arrests above demonstrate why election fraud is practically nonexistent in America).

The court did, however, reprimand North Carolina’s General Assembly and, by extension, Gov. Pat McCrory for using the specter of voter fraud to pass “one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history.”

Any candidate truly committed to law and order would work to stop voter suppression and intimidation in this election instead of furthering debunked claims of voter fraud.

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