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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Experts dispute claims of widespread voter fraud

President Trump promises investigation, but cites little evidence

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 2/8/17

REGIONAL— President Donald Trump’s apparent sensitivity to his popular vote defeat in November has led the new president to say he’ll order “a major investigation” into his allegation that …

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Experts dispute claims of widespread voter fraud

President Trump promises investigation, but cites little evidence

Posted

REGIONAL— President Donald Trump’s apparent sensitivity to his popular vote defeat in November has led the new president to say he’ll order “a major investigation” into his allegation that widespread voter fraud cost him a popular vote victory.

President Trump has continued to allege widespread voter fraud despite a lack of evidence and in the face of bipartisan condemnation. His continued claims contradict his campaign’s own attorneys, who argued that the election was “not tainted” by fraud during their efforts to defeat recount petitions by Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

It wouldn’t be the first time, however, that a Republican President sought to bolster persistent rumors among conservatives that the country suffers from widespread voter fraud. George W. Bush’s administration launched a five-year investigation of its own that revealed just 120 instances of apparent illegal voting nationwide over that period, many of which appeared to hinge on misunderstandings by voters about their eligibility. In the end, only 86 people were prosecuted.

Here in Minnesota, election officials predict that a new investigation would prove equally unproductive.

“Minnesota has rigorous safety measures in place before, on, and after Election Day to ensure our elections are fair and secure,” said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon in response to Trump’s call for an investigation. “I’m interested to see what the President has in mind for this ‘investigation,’ but I see no justification for it and I’m confident that the claim of millions of ineligible voters will remain unfounded.”

When challenged to back up the President’s comments, the Trump administration has frequently turned to a 2012 study by the well-respected Pew Charitable Trust, which examined the state of the nation’s voting rolls. Among the findings of the study, “Inaccurate, Costly, and Inefficient: Evidence That America’s Voter Registration System Needs an Upgrade,” was that more than 1.8 million deceased individuals remained on voting rolls and that approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.

Yet virtually every election official, including the author of the Pew study, David Becker, notes that outdated voter rolls don’t provide evidence of fraud, only that people move, and die, and that it can take time to update voting records. Indeed, in a widely-distributed tweet on Jan. 24, Becker said there was “zero evidence of fraud” in the 2016 presidential election.

President Trump has also cited the work of Gregg Phillips, a conservative activist affiliated with the group True the Vote, which Phillips said had found evidence of thousands of duplicate records and registrations of dead people. Phillips has yet to present his data publicly, although he has cited it to bolster his claim that at least three million illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election.

Election integrity

an ongoing task

That Phillips and Pew found evidence of duplicate records would hardly be surprising. Indeed, major media across the country reported this past week that Phillips himself is registered to vote in three states, Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi, although records show he only voted in Alabama on Nov. 8. Major media have also reported that several of President Trump’s children are registered in more than one state.

St. Louis County Auditor Don Dicklich, who oversees elections in the county, acknowledged that updating records is a constant process. He said county election officials do their best to monitor local obituaries and county death records and will delete voter registrations when they know people have died. Still, he said, many older residents of the county winter elsewhere and when they die in other states, it isn’t always possible for county officials to find out quickly. In those cases, it could be up to four years before their names are cleared from voter rolls. “That’s our fail-safe,” said Dicklich, “if you don’t vote in four years, your name drops off the rolls.”

It’s a somewhat different process to update rolls when resident voters move and must register at their new polling location. Dicklich said county auditors across the state are constantly updating those records in the statewide database, and when a voter leaves one location for another, the records get updated. Dicklich said county election staff are regularly in contact to update voters’ addresses and to be sure that the rolls are as up-to-date as possible. If someone slips through the cracks, as can happen more easily when they move out of state, the four-year fail-safe remains the fallback.

While no voter registration system is going to be perfect, Dicklich said that does not mean it is easy to commit voter fraud. In fact, he said, many voters don’t realize that they are each issued a voter ID number unique to them and that once the statewide voting records are reconciled in the wake of every election, it is relatively easy to spot anyone who may have voted twice.

“It’s possible that someone could sneak through on Election Day, but eventually it will be found that they voted in two places,” said Dicklich. “If someone is committing voter fraud, we will likely catch up to them.” While such cases do occur, Dicklich said they are rare and are certainly not enough to make a difference in an election involving large numbers of voters. He said he can’t recall a case in St. Louis County where a voter actually intended to vote illegally. “There’s not this level of fraud that’s being talked about,” said Dicklich. “The reality is that Minnesota has a really good, tight system. And we continue to improve it.”

With so little evidence for widespread voter fraud, many elections officials, particularly Democrats, worry that politics, rather than actual fraud, may be the driving force behind Republican efforts to undermine confidence in elections and to build public support for voter ID laws and other measures geared toward suppressing minority turnout. Overwhelming support for Democrats from minority groups has made it easier to target such voters, note many elections experts and politicians. That’s one reason that courts have increasingly rejected state measures, ostensibly enacted to prevent voter fraud, for unfairly targeting minority neighborhoods.