Voter Fraud: Is It Really a Thing?

Is voter fraud rare or is it just rarely discovered?

Voter fraud has become a divisive political-campaign issue and given rise to proposals for new voter-identification legislation in 14 states this year. A Texas law passed last year was struck down by federal judges Thursday for failing to prove it wouldn't unfairly affect poor and minority voters.

Some advocates for voter-ID laws point to findings that, in some jurisdictions, registration lists include a large proportion of names that don't belong—sometimes as high as 3%. Meanwhile, researchers studying voter fraud—a term used to refer to cases in which one voter impersonates another at the poll to cast a fraudulent vote—say they have so far found little direct evidence that the practice is common enough to affect the results of elections, even close ones.

Comments

[Lord Rae]

It's a solution looking for a problem. The real issue of voter fraud comes through absentee voting and has a much higher incident rate... although no one is about to suggest that absentee voting should be restricted further because those are usually more traditional republican votes.
I'm not saying anyone should be able to vote without being challenged in any way, but if you can't point to more cases of voter fraud than people who are going to be screwed by these new laws then they need to be dropped.