Voter Fraud

The 2020 presidential campaign was plagued by charges of voter fraud both before and after the election took place. While past literature finds that electoral losers are most likely to express misgivings about election integrity, little else is known about the characteristics of individuals who exhibit these beliefs or how the beliefs have changed over time. Employing national surveys from 2012, 2016, 2018, and 2020, we examine the levels of pre-election expectations of fraud in the event of an electoral loss over time, as well as the individual-level correlates of beliefs in a range of election-related conspiracy theories prominent in 2020. Our analysis reveals that beliefs in election fraud are common and stable across time, and only occasionally relate to partisanship. Moreover, we find that, even accounting for the influence of partisan motivated reasoning, several psychological orientations––conspiracy thinking, anomie, dark triad personality traits, and denialism––play a unique role in promoting perceptions of voter fraud.

Belief in electoral fraud has received heightened attention due to elite rhetoric and controversial voter identification (ID) laws. Using a two-wave national survey administered before and after the 2012 election, we examine the individual-level correlates of belief in a range of election-related conspiracy theories. Our data show that partisanship affects the timing and content of belief in election-related conspiracy theories, but a general disposition toward conspiratorial thinking strongly influences those beliefs. Support for voter ID laws, in contrast, appears to be driven largely by party identification through elite-mass linkages. Our analysis suggests that belief in election fraud is a common and predictable consequence of both underlying conspiratorial thinking and motivated partisan reasoning.

The 2016 U.S. Presidential election was unique for many reasons, especially the widespread endorsement of falsehoods about the candidates and the electoral process. Using a unique experiment fielded the week prior to the election, we examine whether correcting information can overcome misperceptions about election fraud. We find that providing counter information is generally ineffective at remedying misperceptions and can, depending on the source, increase endorsements of misperceptions among Republicans. Although information from a fact-checking source is generally unconvincing, when given with evidence from an unlikely source – in our experiment, Breitbart News – both Republicans and Democrats decrease beliefs in voter fraud.

The idea that the political system is subject to rampant and invisible voter fraud has animated recent debates over the regulation of elections. Election integrity advocates have claimed that this threat justifies voter identification laws and other laws that have narrowed the ability for some citizens to vote, while voting-rights advocates have claimed that these measures are a form of voter suppression. These legal changes have occurred despite research that has demonstrated that virtually no actual voter fraud (specifically voter impersonation fraud) exists. While the consensus is that these voter suppression initiatives are driven by naked partisanship, this consensus fails to consider how longstanding ideological traditions about voter participation (and their interrelation with race, gender, and class myths) influence the debates over how to adequately regulate the right to vote.

This paper will propose a different theoretical framework to address the voter fraud myth: memetics. This paper argues that the most appropriate way to think about the myth of voter fraud is as a meme. A meme is “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture” without regard to the truth or falsity of the idea. Memes spread because the ideas re-enforce the views of the purveyors of the meme and increase the purveyor’s power. In a sense, our memes can program us to accept or explain away ideas and can form the basis of our ideologies.

When viewed as a meme, the voter fraud claim can be analyzed as the latest variation on the ideology of exclusion of the “unworthy” from the franchise. The voter fraud meme replicates through both evoking myths and stereotypes about the worthiness of certain voters and motivates individuals and legislatures to replicate the meme through a belief that the unworthy voter will be a threat to the democratic process. This process of replication has contributed to the passage of voter identification and similar legislation, the popularity of heightened regulation of the voting process, and private acts of voter vigilantism. This account will demonstrate how the meme of voter fraud interferes either intentionally or inadvertently with the democratic value of inclusion and forces policymakers to fail to account for the effects of structural exclusion. Courts, scholars, and policymakers can use the analytic framework offered in this paper to more thoroughly understand the ideological forces behind the meme of voter fraud. This paper concludes by offering a framework by which courts and policymakers can separate the voter fraud meme and other such ideology from fact-driven analysis of right to vote issues.

The idea that the political system is subject to rampant and invisible voter fraud has animated recent debates over the regulation of elections. Election integrity advocates have claimed that this threat justifies voter identification laws and other laws that have narrowed the ability for some citizens to vote, while voting-rights advocates have claimed that these measures are a form of voter suppression. These legal changes have occurred despite research that has demonstrated that virtually no actual voter fraud (specifically voter impersonation fraud) exists. While the consensus is that these voter suppression initiatives are driven by naked partisanship, this consensus fails to consider how longstanding ideological traditions about voter participation (and their interrelation with race, gender, and class myths) influence the debates over how to adequately regulate the right to vote. This paper will propose a different theoretical framework to address the voter fraud myth: memetic...

Belief in electoral fraud has received heightened attention due to elite rhetoric and controversial voter identification (ID) laws. Using a two-wave national survey administered before and after the 2012 election, we examine the individual-level correlates of belief in a range of election-related conspiracy theories. Our data show that partisanship affects the timing and content of belief in election-related conspiracy theories, but a general disposition toward conspiratorial thinking strongly influences those beliefs. Support for voter ID laws, in contrast, appears to be driven largely by party identification through elite-mass linkages. Our analysis suggests that belief in election fraud is a common and predictable consequence of both underlying conspiratorial thinking and motivated partisan reasoning.

Dear Mr. Gonzalez:

Thank you for your email of August 8, 2017, wherein you requested an update regarding the matter. Please review the attached letter to New York Attorney General’s Office dated May 15, 2017, along with the receipt of mailing photocopied thereto. Unfortunately, the parcel never reached the Attorney General because, according to employees at the US Postal Service, the parcel was intercepted, removed, and/or otherwise purged from the federal mail facility. Stated more succinctly, the odds are that an employee saw to it that the parcel was neither delivered to the Attorney General’s Office nor preserved for future delivery or return to me.

As you know, the claims raised in this lawsuit reveal widespread disorder precipitated by representatives of local, state, and federal institutions, resulting in systematic deprivations of basic and fundamental constitutional rights. The fact that you have reached out to me is encouraging, being that Article III authorizes, nay requires, the District Court to take action despite purported electronic filing system errors. Surely, the justification for the continued abuses outlined in the complaint could not be due to any sort of filing error notification or computer malfunction when visiting the Court’s website.

As you will observe from the balance of the attachments hereto, we are documenting each and every instance of corruption that we can, toward the end of restoring order, as people are assaulted daily by rackets having found a foothold in selected government institutions. These outrages are progressing daily, whereby there is a general crisis of disorder that threatens every class of Americans, all of whom presently realize no cognizable recourse and are forced to live in the United States without the guarantees that we all are entitled to.

In light of the circumstances outlined in the amended complaint, I would ask you take a very close look at it, and confer with the assigned Judge to formulate a plan for halting the current abuses and preventing further abuses during the pendency of the Attorney General filing his responsive pleading. If there are any doubts as to what authority the Court has, just let me know and you can count on the plaintiff Brian King, Jr., a former federal law clerk in the Seventh Circuit, to provide you a report and recommendation, in which he can explain not only the powers of Article III courts under such circumstances, but also the specific obligations of Article III officers now that those circumstances have come to the District Court’s attention.

We all took an oath to support and defend the US Constitution, duly enacted and ratified almost 240 years ago, and I applaud you for recognizing that it could not depend for enforcement upon fussy data-entry prompts on CM/ECF or Pacer. To be sure, the matters at hand cannot and will not be resolved by gamesmanship, sophistry, personality contests, or any other form of adversarialism, but will instead be rectified by dialectical collaboration between duty-bound sworn officers of our Nation’s Supreme Law, all unified in diligent resolve.

I thank you for your vigilance and I hope you will inspire your colleagues to match our collaborative efforts.

Sincerely, Edward G. Eiseman, Esq.

"Why We Can't Have Nice Things" explores the feasibility of using  internet or online voting processes in U.S. national elections. For many years, the consensus has been that online voting could never be trusted for elections due the perception of the vulnerability of online transactions to hacking, fraud, theft, and other harmful acts. However, just as technological advances has increased the availability and use of internet based survey and voting methods, also as technology advanced with ways to secure those transactions and activities. According to some, the idea of highly vulnerable online elections is a myth to prevent allowing more Americans to participate in national elections. For others, any risk of tampering is too great to accept, for online or in person voting.

ARE YOU A CITIZEN WHO VOTES OR A PROXY VOTE BY THE BOARD OF THE US CORPORATION?
I hope you will all take a moment to think about what i have written here...it was written 5 years ago and is still worthy of your time...it's time we all think about what a "vote" is about.
www.abolishthebankers.com