Josh Marshall on Voter Fraud…and how it doesn't really exist, at least in the sense of someone going to a precinct and voting twice or voting when they weren't who they said they were. I do think it happens when, for example, a state "accidentally" purges thousands of names from their roster. But national voter I.D. cards (or some other ideas proposed to stop this supposed epidemic of people voting illegally) take us into the realm of cures for which there is no known disease. Significant numbers of people do not go around voting twice.
I could have voted twice in this week's run-off election to pick the Mayor of Los Angeles. As it happens, I didn't even vote once. I had no preference for one candidate over another and I don't think the person in the mayor's job here ever makes much difference. But let's say I believed passionately that electing Eric Garcetti would end life as we know it in Southern California and unleash pestilence and disease so everything depended on Wendy Greuel beating him. I could have cast my ballot for her and I could also have marked the absentee ballot that was sent to my late mother and forwarded to my address.
But why? Why would I want to risk going to jail so that Wendy Greuel would lose by 26,497 votes instead of 26,498? If I could have somehow cast 40,000 votes then, well, maybe. But elections of this size are never decided by a few votes. If I'm going to chance doing hard time, it would be nice to get something out of it.