A Professor Looked At 15 Years' Worth Of Information. Then A Designer Packed It Into 1 Punchy GIF.

[demmiblue]

Source: Upworthy

A law professor looked at "credible allegations" of voter fraud in the U.S. from 2000 to 2014. Here's what he found in one mesmerizing GIF.



Conservative politicians across the U.S. are using voter fraud as a scapegoat to pass laws — like voter ID requirements or reduced early voting — that are making it harder for certain constituents to cast their ballots. Such laws were once considered to be wholly unconstitutional.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), which basically banned racism at the polls, is the most successful civil rights law ever enacted by the U.S. Congress. But in 2013, the Supreme Court — specifically Justices Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito — undid a VRA provision that cleared barriers to voting in areas where minority voters were heavily silenced at the polls.

The decision was a shameful exercise in either missing the point (which is really hard to believe) or simply not giving a shit about the consequences. Their message: Times have changed! Just look at all these black people and their votes!

Read more: http://www.upworthy.com/a-professor-looked-at-15-years-worth-of-information-then-a-designer-packed-it-into-1-punchy-gif?c=hpstream

[liberal N proud]

1. Voter Fraud/ Welfare Fraud, both are obsessions of the right wing

They are busy keeping everyone busy worrying about these minor infractions while they run away with the kitty.

[XemaSab]

2. And what do they have in common?

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/4060409344/hED1E09A8/

[MADem]

14. Yes, We TAN!!!!!

The GOP--Not Even Subtle!

[deutsey]

11. It serves two basic purposes

1. It "explains" for them why their candidates lose (it can't possibly be the candidate's agenda, so there must be voter fraud, of course!)

2. It gives them a ruse to use in narrowing who is eligible to vote (limiting the franchise to those who look and think like them...you know, the real 'Muricans!)

[NightWatcher]

3. 31 counts of fraud vs how many counts of legitimate voters being prevented from voting?

Hundreds here a few thousand there... Mainly young, minority, or poor...you know, voters who typically (but not always, why, I have no idea) vote Democratic.

[mindwalker_i]

15. They're not legitimate if they vote for Democrats

[Auggie]

4. Conservatives created a nonexistent disaster then exploited it. Typical fascist thinking.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. Well said, and exactly right! n/t

[demmiblue]

9. Yep, they exploited it so they could use it as a cover to commit...

election fraud and voter disenfranchisement.

[underpants]

5. How many people were phone jammed in NH in 2002

Oh that's right we are supposed to forget about that

[Fred Sanders]

7. Transparent scapegoat to bleet to the mass media which just re-bleets, using the cover in

the meantime for pressing on with their own fraud on the voters and frontal attack on democracy.

[rurallib]

8. can I have a refund from the Republican Party

for all the time and money wasted on this witch hunt AND
on their ridiculous lawsuit.

[pansypoo53219]

10. and i bet there is money to be siphoned off the 'fix'.

[MH1]

26. *** THIS ^^^^ ***

[GeoWilliam750]

12. Excellent post

[calimary]

13. Totally!

And it's a greatly simplified visual aid. Which should be used. By all of us. Illustrates the point exceedingly well.

Needs to be said, read, and spread!

[vanlassie]

22. YES!! This is how you educate low information people.

When we perfect this strategy, their bullshit will become nullified. See: The L-Curve.

[niyad]

16. k and r and bookmarking this handy little visual aid.

[TNNurse]

17. They are not worried about

Voter fraud. They are worried about people voting for someone they cannot control.

Fraud is just an euphemism for "don't let those people vote".

[Cha]

18. Yeah!

[TygrBright]

19. Because when someone brown votes, it's fraud. n/t

[Iron Man]

20. It's amazing the right claims rampant voter fraud but there basically isn't any.

[Quantess]

21. Love it!

[Donald Ian Rankin]

23. Unfortunately, that infographic is a complete lie.

Last edited Sat Aug 30, 2014, 12:19 PM - Edit history (1)

31 is the number of cases where there is evidence to suppose that people have impersonated someone else.

We have no idea how widespread doing it and getting away with it successfully is.

I suspect the answer is "not very", but this kind of nonsense really doesn't help, except possibly when dealing with people foolish enough to fall for it.

[Jerry442]

24. So, if only one out of a thousand people get caught...

...that would be 31,000 fraudulent votes in 15 years, about 2067 per year. In 2012, the total number of votes for president was 126,849,296. That would work out to an estimated fraudulent vote rate of less than .002% that year.

Doesn't exactly sound like a real barnburner of problem to me.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

28. Your conclusion certainly follows from your assumption.

Conversely, if one person in seven voted fraudulently, for a total of 18,000,000 fraudulent votes, that would work out to 1 in 600,000 being caught. That's the conclusion that follows from that assumption.

For what it's worth, it wouldn't surprise me if your one in a thousand was an underestimate rather than an overestimate - I see no reason to suppose that fraudulent voting in this fashion is widespread. But I don't like seeing data being overtly abused in the way the OP was, and I'm nervous about the way that you're using it (although you're not doing anything nearly as egregious as the OP - it was a direct lie; yours is perfectly correct and honest, but potentially misleading because it might potentially lead people to assume that there's some reason to suppose that 1 in a 1,000 rather than 1 in 100 or 1 in 10,000 fraudulent would-be voters got caught).

[Jerry442]

31. And if there's been only one indecent-exposure arrest in your town in 20 years...

...that doesn't logically prove that there aren't unobserved/unreported naked people in the streets all over the place every day. But seriously.

The point was to take verified facts, add some plausible assumptions, and look at the consequences. You may, if you want, take issue with my 1 per 1000 assumed apprehension rate for fraudulent voters -- it was, after all a scientific wild-assed guess. I'm going to say it's a whole heck of a lot more plausible than your example of 1 out of 600,000, which I don't think even meets SWAG standards.

[VPStoltz]

30. People...enough to fall for it.

Were you too ... to remember to insert the word you wanted here?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

33. Touche.

[IDemo]

25. It doesn't help that the MSM has adopted 'voter fraud' as the catch-all term

to include election fraud.

[MH1]

27. I heartily agree with the conclusion but suspect 31 is understated.

But that said, following the buried link to the actual study, my suspicion is fairly well addressed. The "31" number refers ONLY to that certain type of voter fraud that would be addressed by voter id laws - NOT the more effective types of fraud where multiple fraudulent ballots could be cast.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/

Election fraud happens. But ID laws are not aimed at the fraud you’ll actually hear about. Most current ID laws (Wisconsin is a rare exception) aren’t designed to stop fraud with absentee ballots (indeed, laws requiring ID at the polls push more people into the absentee system, where there are plenty of real dangers). Or vote buying. Or coercion. Or fake registration forms. Or voting from the wrong address. Or ballot box stuffing by officials in on the scam. In the 243-page document that Mississippi State Sen. Chris McDaniel filed on Monday with evidence of allegedly illegal votes in the Mississippi Republican primary, there were no allegations of the kind of fraud that ID can stop.

Instead, requirements to show ID at the polls are designed for pretty much one thing: people showing up at the polls pretending to be somebody else in order to each cast one incremental fake ballot. This is a slow, clunky way to steal an election. Which is why it rarely happens.

Who in the world would risk a felony conviction to cast ONE fraudulent ballot? And who in the world would be willing to pay enough for multiple people to take that risk?

For the cases of organized, multiple-ballot fraud, there needs to be another solution, and in some cases it's already fixed. For example, in Philadelphia, there is a saying, "voting the cemeteries". Sure that could have happened in the past - but ONLY in precincts that are solidly one party and when the other party just isn't paying attention. But yeah, it could have happened. But with modern information technology, the only "cemetery" voters that should even be in the pollbooks are people who died shortly before the election. So that problem, if it ever existed (and I'm willing to say it may have, once), is FIXED. And not by denying any legitimate voters the right to vote, but rather by technology and process improvements.

But, don't even get me started on black-box voting. (Still, even that kind of fraud would require a conspiracy.)

[questionseverything]

34. black box voting and reporting is the problem

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7875

2,699 Republican votes have now disappeared! There were reportedly 2,793 Republican voters on May 19th, but just 94 as of May 25th! Neat trick!

To top it all off, even after all of these mystery adjustments, the "total votes" cast in Monroe County as of May 21st, as shown above, is said to be 2,159 --- so, despite the radical change in results, the county's 0% undervote rate stayed intact. Every single voter who cast a vote in either the Republican or Democratic Primary election on May 18th voted in the Senate election, at least according to the Arkansas Sec. of State.

The "good" news? In the CD1 race, while the number of Republican voters has dropped by 229 (to 89 total) and the number of Democratic votes has increased by 60 (to 1,920 total), at least there are not now more Democratic votes than physically possible, as with the county's original numbers on May 19th.

So What The Hell Is Going On?

It's taken a week or so of going from one election official to another to to unwind the mess, and only some of the anomalies detailed above were finally explained.

In trying to sort it all out, The BRAD BLOG spoke to a clerk at the Secretary of State's office, the State's Director of Elections and, on the local level, the Monroe County Clerk, Election Commissioner and Elections Coordinator. None of them were able to explain the most troubling aspect of the numbers.
////////////////////////////

numbers fly all over the place and no election official has any clue as to why

[VPStoltz]

29. Give them credit for being consistently stupid...

That's the same number of "scientists" who are climate change deniers - and the Teabaggers are going with them.

[customerserviceguy]

32. You could do a similar graphic

with the number of airline passengers and the number of hijacking/terrorist attempts on planes, and use that as justification for not asking for photo ID for flying.

[DesertDiamond]

35. They DO give a shite about the consequences. Voter suppression is the INTENDED consequence.