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When it comes to voter ID laws, Republicans care intensely about fraud while Democrats worry more about whether their own party will come out ahead, according to a provocative new academic study that challenges conventional assumptions about what motivates support for stricter voting laws.

Voting-rights activists have long accused GOP officeholders of racism or political expedience in fights over voting laws, but the study suggests that at least for average voters, Republicans’ support is a good-faith assessment of dangers they see in illegal voting.

Republicans respond to even small reports of voter fraud, seeing them as a reason to back stricter voting access, according to the research by John V. Kane, a professor at New York University, whose study was published in the latest Public Opinion Quarterly.

Democrats, meanwhile, generally support voter-ID but their support is less firm. If told the GOP would suffer from stricter voter-ID laws, Democrats become more supportive, Mr. Kane found.

“There’s different concerns in both camps. Republicans really do appear to be super-concerned about fraud and Democrats not so much. Democrats really appear to be concerned about the electoral implications, not so much fraud,” Mr. Kane told The Washington Times.

His findings were for voters at large, where overall support for voter ID is relatively high among Democrats, Republicans and independents.

By contrast, GOP and Democratic lawmakers are deeply divided, with the latter accusing the GOP of trying to deny minorities, the elderly and poor voters an equal chance at the polls.

Mr. Kane’s study, tested through a series of polling questions, asked voters about their support for voter ID, then experimented with what happened when told about voter fraud, and about effects of ID laws on their own party’s electoral success.

GOP voters’ already high support for photo ID at the polls increased when told about even small instances of fraud. But it showed little change when told that Democrats would benefit, or when told the GOP would benefit.

Independents also responded to reports of voter fraud by increasing support for photo ID — though not to the levels of Republicans.

Among Democrats, though, moderate support for voter ID didn’t budge when told about fraud. Support for voter ID did surge when told Democrats would benefit, and plunged when told Republicans would benefit.

Attempts to reach voting-rights groups for reaction were unsuccessful, but one professor who studies voting rights said his reading of Mr. Kane’s findings was that Republican voters were so strongly in favor of ID laws that nothing could move them — not even partisan considerations.

Mr. Kane countered that there was indeed some room for movement, as proved by the rise in support based on accounts of voter fraud. “I don’t know that I’d say they’re completely non-malleable,” he said.

The actual prevalence of voter fraud is heatedly debated, with voting-rights activists arguing it’s overstated and the actual evidence is scant.

In his questions, Mr. Kane suggested that fraud is a slim problem, saying that over the last 15 years there have been 31 incidents — out of 1 billion ballots cast — of a voter trying to impersonate someone else at the polls.

President Trump, though, has claimed fraud — including non-citizens voting — is rampant, and has created a voter integrity commission to study the issue.

Two of the panel members said Mr. Kane’s study undersold the threats of fraud, though they said his conclusion that worries about fraud motivates voters are accurate.

J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation and a commission member, called Mr. Kane’s study “academic gobbledy****.”

“Voter ID is yesterday’s fight, and it’s a fight proponents won because it is supported overwhelmingly,” Mr. Adams said. “The bottom line is the vast majority of Americans support voter ID. That some academic study found that Democrats are less concerned about election crimes is hardly news.”

Hans Von Spakovsky, another commissioner and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said some of Mr. Kane’s framing in his questions to voters were wrong in that they too narrowly described the dangers and prevalence of fraud.

But he said the basic conclusion that GOP voters are motivated by a law-and-order approach to voting is correct.

“I do agree that Republicans want ID because of their concerns over fraud and not because they somehow believe it will help them strategically and in a partisan fashion,” he said.

 

http://www.gopusa.com/republic...ts-just-want-to-win/

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Demmies keep trying to hide their crimes by claiming there are none.  However, there are plenty if one just looks.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/g...-in-florida-n1811547

http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/the...-vote-fraud-reports/

http://www.nationalreview.com/...f-its-easy-john-fund

http://www.foxnews.com/politic...voting-concerns.html

This doesn't include the thousands of illegal and legal aliens found voting, which I've posted several times before.

I guess "W" was just suffering from dementia. Or perhaps is was "W"s Justice Dept. who was suffering from dementia. Perhaps it's Republicans who suffer from dementia or maybe Liarstraights has dementia and that would explain why his posts contain so much erroneous information or blatant lies.

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  • A five-year voter fraud investigation conducted by the George W. Bush administration “turned up virtually no evidence” of organized fraud, in the words of the New York Times. While the investigation did yield 86 criminal convictions as of 2006, many of those appear to have been linked to people misunderstanding eligibility rules or filling out paperwork incorrectly.

and then there's a few more useless investigations I'll list below.

  • In 2014, a two-year investigation into voter fraud by Iowa's Republican secretary of state yielded 27 criminal charges, a number of which, again, were apparently related to mistakes or misunderstandings of voting rules.
  • In December, a Washington Post analysis of news reports found four documented cases of voter fraud out of about 136 million votes cast. That would yield a voter fraud rate of one instance per every 34 million ballots, close to what Levitt's investigation turned up. Two of those fraud cases involved Trump voters trying to vote twice, one involved a Republican election judge trying to fill out a ballot on behalf of her dead husband, and the last involved a poll worker filling in bubbles for a mayoral candidate in absentee ballots in Florida.
  • A team of Dartmouth researchers undertook a comprehensive statistical investigation of the 2016 results, looking for evidence of abnormal voting patterns. They checked for evidence of non-citizen voting, dead people voting and tampering by election officials. They didn't find any. “Our findings do strongly suggest, however, that voter fraud concerns fomented by the Trump campaign are not grounded in any observable features of the 2016 presidential election,” they concluded (emphasis theirs). “There is no evidence of millions of fraudulent votes.”
  • Trump's assertion of widespread voter fraud contradicts statements by his campaign's lawyers, who stated unequivocally that “all available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud or mistake.” The statement was made in a filing opposing Green Party candidate Jill Stein's recount efforts in Michigan.
  • In Kansas, the Republican secretary of state examined 84 million votes cast in 22 states to look for cases of duplicate registration. The project yielded 14 prosecutions, representing 0.000017% of the votes cast.
  • In 2011, Wisconsin authorities charged 20 people with fraudulent voting in the 2008 elections. Most of these were felons who were ineligible to vote.
  • The National Association of Secretaries of State, which represents most of the nation's top election officials (most of whom happen to be Republican), released a statement Tuesday saying, “We are not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by President Trump.”
Last edited by SirWasabi

I guess "W" was just suffering from dementia. Or perhaps is was "W"s Justice Dept. who was suffering from dementia. Perhaps it's Republicans who suffer from dementia or maybe Liarstraights has dementia and that would explain why his posts contain so much erroneous information or blatant lies.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  • A five-year voter fraud investigation conducted by the George W. Bush administration “turned up virtually no evidence” of organized fraud, in the words of the New York Times. While the investigation did yield 86 criminal convictions as of 2006, many of those appear to have been linked to people misunderstanding eligibility rules or filling out paperwork incorrectly.

and then there's a few more useless investigations I'll list below.

  • In 2014, a two-year investigation into voter fraud by Iowa's Republican secretary of state yielded 27 criminal charges, a number of which, again, were apparently related to mistakes or misunderstandings of voting rules.
  • In December, a Washington Post analysis of news reports found four documented cases of voter fraud out of about 136 million votes cast. That would yield a voter fraud rate of one instance per every 34 million ballots, close to what Levitt's investigation turned up. Two of those fraud cases involved Trump voters trying to vote twice, one involved a Republican election judge trying to fill out a ballot on behalf of her dead husband, and the last involved a poll worker filling in bubbles for a mayoral candidate in absentee ballots in Florida.
  • A team of Dartmouth researchers undertook a comprehensive statistical investigation of the 2016 results, looking for evidence of abnormal voting patterns. They checked for evidence of non-citizen voting, dead people voting and tampering by election officials. They didn't find any. “Our findings do strongly suggest, however, that voter fraud concerns fomented by the Trump campaign are not grounded in any observable features of the 2016 presidential election,” they concluded (emphasis theirs). “There is no evidence of millions of fraudulent votes.”
  • Trump's assertion of widespread voter fraud contradicts statements by his campaign's lawyers, who stated unequivocally that “all available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud or mistake.” The statement was made in a filing opposing Green Party candidate Jill Stein's recount efforts in Michigan.
  • In Kansas, the Republican secretary of state examined 84 million votes cast in 22 states to look for cases of duplicate registration. The project yielded 14 prosecutions, representing 0.000017% of the votes cast.
  • In 2011, Wisconsin authorities charged 20 people with fraudulent voting in the 2008 elections. Most of these were felons who were ineligible to vote.
  • The National Association of Secretaries of State, which represents most of the nation's top election officials (most of whom happen to be Republican), released a statement Tuesday saying, “We are not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by President Trump.”

 

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