Voter Fraud Report

On Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 1:00 p.m., the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties held a hearing on “Lessons Learned from the 2004 Presidential Election” at which Hans von Spakovsky provided testimony.  The following is a statement by Angela Kelley, Director of the Immigration Policy Center, an immigration research organization in Washington.

“In the world of elections and politics, there isn’t very much room for unanimous agreement.  Yet, when it comes to modern-day voter fraud, most election experts agree that it’s an extremely rare and outright irrational occurrence.  A recent report published by the Heritage Foundation, entitled, The Threat of Non-Citizen Voting, written by Hans von Spakovsky, challenges sound research with unsubstantiated evidence and sheer innuendo to make the empirically outrageous claim that non-citizens are subverting the electoral process.

The rigorous research of both the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and Project Vote has shown that voter fraud in the U.S. is almost non-existent.  The simple act of voting is simply not worth the cost and likelihood of getting caught.  Virtually ignoring fact and evidence, the Heritage Foundation’s report consists of a rambling “legal memorandum” claiming that an unknowable yet large number of non-citizens are voting illegally and subverting the electoral process. 

Allegations of fraud are commonly used for partisan political purposes to justify measures that would disenfranchise legitimate voters. Research finds that most allegations of voter fraud by non-citizens stem from faulty records, partisan politics, and commonplace error.

Rather than acknowledge von Spakovksy’s largely discredited, false, and flashy alarms that translate into only a handful of fraudulent voters over the past couple of years, Congress should react to the growing numbers of would-be citizens who are being deprived of the right to vote because U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) fails to process naturalization applications in a timely fashion.  Disenfranchisement, not fraud, is the greatest offense that plagues our electoral process.”

For more information contact Andrea Nill, 202-507-7520 or email anill@ailf.org

Fact Sheet from the Immigration Policy Center:

Chicken Little in the Voting Booth  (Washington, DC: July 2008).

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