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Ohio GOP Plays Voter Fraud Card
Ohio GOP Plays Voter Fraud Card
By Stephen Majors, The Associated
Press
Monday 13 October 2008
For full
story see…
Ohio GOP Plays Voter Fraud
Card
Columbus, Ohio - If Republican lawsuits and rhetoric are any indication, the specter of voting fraud is looming large over the November election.
A weeklong period in which new voters can register and immediately cast a ballot? Ripe for voting fraud. The state's method of verifying voter registration information? Insufficient to prevent voter fraud.
Voter fraud was a buzz phrase for the Ohio GOP when it pushed voter identification requirements through the state Legislature in 2005. It's now a driving factor behind a flurry of GOP lawsuits leveled against Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, seeking either to restrict early voting or mandate how voter information should be checked.
But do the arguments come with supporting evidence that voter fraud is prominent, or that the current election system isn't catching it when it does happen? No.
Voter fraud is not a widely studied phenomenon, but the vast majority who have studied allegations say that it's extremely rare.
"There's a lot more rhetoric than reality when it comes to actual voter fraud," said Dan Tokaji, an elections law expert at Ohio State University. "There's this public perception that voter fraud is common when the reality is that it's quite rare."
A 2005 report by the League of Women Voters of Ohio and the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio found that of about 9 million votes cast in the state from 2002-2004, there were four fraudulent ballots. The data was collected from interviews with all 88 county boards of elections.
For full story see…
Ohio
GOP Plays Voter Fraud
Card
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