Every time there are investigations into voter fraud and attempts to crack down on it, the Democrats have a bad habit of wailing about it being some sort of attempt at voter suppression. For instance, columns like this argue that President Trump’s commission investigating voter fraud is using its investigation as a pretext for voter suppression.
Here are five facts showing that voter suppression isn’t happening.
1. Thus far, Trump’s commission has only asked for voter data. These include “names, voting history and other information, as permitted under state laws.” A total of 26 states have said they would provide data to the commission but not everything the commission is asking for, while 14 states and Washington, D.C. have refused to comply.
This has resulted in hysteria from organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), that claim this is some sort of violation of privacy. But as Robert Knight pointed out, the commission is simply checking if state voter rolls match up with federal records, a method that is “already codified in the National Voter Registration Act, best known as the Motor Voter Law.” They’re attempting to weed out ineligible voters, which is not some nefarious scheme to encroach upon privacy and implement voter suppression.
2. Hillary Clinton blamed her loss in Wisconsin on supposed voter suppression stemming from voter ID laws. There is no evidence that any voter suppression occurred in Wisconsin. According to John Fund:
Slate — in a story headlined “Did a Voter ID Law Really Cost Clinton a Victory in Wisconsin?” — quoted several election experts who poured “a big bucket of cold water” on the idea. The reliably liberal fact-checker Snopes ruled the claim “unproven,” noting that even if some people lacked the ID required to vote and didn’t bother to fill out provisional ballots, it didn’t mean they wanted to vote.
The liberal website Vox went further and pointed out that 1) Clinton lost in key states that didn’t have new voter-ID laws and 2) her margin of defeat was too big to be explained by any suppression. Even the New York Times filed a report from Wisconsin that found that black voters were far less excited about Hillary as a candidate than they had been about Obama.
Clinton’s excuse of voter suppression is a deflection from the fact that she didn’t really campaign in Wisconsin.
3. North Carolina passed a bevy of measures aimed at strengthening the right to vote in 2013. The Left claimed that the measures would suppress voters, but the evidence suggests otherwise. These measures included requiring voter ID, abolishing same-day registration, decreasing the early voting period, and preventing those who will turn 18 by election day from registering to vote before then.
If these measures were truly aimed at suppressing the vote, then they failed, as there were over 2.7 million votes in North Carolina’s November 2014 election, a record high for the state. Turnout as a whole increased in the state by 1.7% in 2014 from 2010.
If Trump’s commission ends up recommending measures akin to North Carolina’s 2013 bill, the data shows that it won’t suppress the vote.
4. Voter fraud is real. For instance, according to Fund, an estimated 6.4% of non-citizens voted in 2008, which was “enough to have changed the outcome in some states.” The Daily Wire reported on other instances and statistics that prove the existence of voter fraud here and here, which shows that investigations into the matter are not a pretext for voter suppression.
5. The Democrats want to win by hook or by crook. Per Fund:
Take Virginia, where Christian Adams, a former Justice Department lawyer who now runs the Public Interest Legal Foundation, has found that election officials routinely fail to alert law enforcement about illegal votes or registrations.
“At the instruction of Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe, local officials hid critical information that would have improved election integrity, while McAuliffe, a former Clinton political operative, vetoed proposal after proposal to shore up the laws,” Adams told me. The Washington Post reported that McAuliffe appointees to the state’s Board of Elections even wanted to eliminate the requirement that those registering to vote “check boxes to indicate whether they are U.S. citizens or felons whose right to vote has not been restored.”
This shows that the Democrats are more than willing to look the other way on voter fraud — and in some cases even gloat about engaging in voter fraud — because they’re willing to win by any means necessary. Their cries about how attempts to investigate or crack down on voter fraud are voter suppression is their way of distracting people from their tolerance for voter fraud that helps them win.