'Voter Fraud': Watching our language, again, still

Written by: John Burik on Apr 1, 2007 8:43 AM EDT

The term voter fraud has again crept into the public conversation with questions about the firing of US Attorneys.  The alleged failure of certain attorneys to aggressively pursue "voter fraud" led to some of the attorneys' termination. Who wouldn't oppose voter fraud?  We want clean elections as much as want clean air.

Voter fraud, however, refers to individual voters who improperly seek to register or vote.  While it does occur and no one fighting for democracy supports it, fraudulent votes--resulting from individual voter behavior--are largely a myth.  There were four (4) actual cases of voter fraud prosecuted in Ohio in 2004, and as state Senator Teresa Fedor put it last year, "Minnie Mouse didn't vote."  Waldman and Levitt put the attorney firings and voter fraud in context in a WaPo piece. 

Like terrorism the term is used to elicit fear and justify overly stringent identification requirements which have the effect of decreasing voter registration and turnout, de facto disenfranchisement of young, poor or minority voters.  Hmm.  Who would want to do that? 

Unfortunately, the term voter fraud is again being conflated with the larger and real problem of election fraud which includes voter intimidation, misinformation, defective software, and provisional and absentee ballots improperly discarded.

So watch your language and insist speakers and writers get honest--and accurate--on the issue.  The US Attorneys "failing" to pursue voter fraud means they refused to be complicit in disenfranchsing likely Democratic voters.

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