Voter fraud is a “myth,” cont.

Matt seems vexed that conservatives (like myself) refuse to admit that throwing around allegations of voter fraud is akin to intimidating voters into not exercising the franchise, or some such. From the first (of two) posts on the subject Friday:

What’s needed to make a real case for voter fraud is instances of people actually voting fraudulently — people who aren’t registered to vote voting, or people voting multiple times. But year after year nobody can ever find more than a trivial number of instances of fraudulent voting. Instead, the issue is raised every year in order to raise barriers to voting by perfectly eligible voters.

I think there’s some common ground to be had here: yes, the numbers of actual instances of people casting fraudulent ballots seems to be minimal, but it does happen, right? And efforts should be taken to stop this from occurring, yes? There is another example of fraudulent registration forms being submitted by ACORN again today:

Hamilton County received more than 160,000 documents this year related to voter registration and change of address. Of the more than 40,000 documents received from ACORN, about 10,000 have been duplicates and many have come back with invalid addresses. Of the remaining documents “I do believe fictitious ones are registered,” said Williams “We don’t cross check this. That’s supposed to be done on a state-wide database. So if that isn’t done, we don’t have the resources to do it.”

He said multiple registrations came in with the same name, but slightly different addresses or birth dates. His office has received calls from people saying they never filled out a registration card. [Emphasis mine]

Now, we can argue all day about the real-life impact of voter fraud on elections. I think it’s safe to say that, in a state that is sure to be close, as Ohio is, that even a few hundred fraudulent ballots (a “trivial” number, out of the hundreds of thousands cast) could make a huge difference. Therefore it should be a priority to get fraudulently registered voters off of the roles for the good of the democratic process. When someone casts a fraudulent ballot it’s the same thing as taking a rightfully cast ballot and throwing it in the trash.

But wanting to stop fraudulent ballots from being cast has nothing to do with racism, or suppressing voter turnout, or any other evil plot. What annoys me about Yglesias’s posts on the subject is his assumption that the other side is a collection of malignant racists simply trying to disenfranchise poor black people. It never even occurs to him that there might be, y’know, a principle to uphold.