For months Donald Trump has been going on, and on, and, my god, on about voter fraud, as if it were a plague upon the American political system. It’s happening … right … now ... even though elections aren’t held on Thursdays.
Three days ago he said:
“They even want to try to rig the election at the polling booths and believe me there’s a lot going on,” he told supporters at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin. “Do you ever hear these people? They say ‘there’s nothing going on.’ People that have died 10 years ago are still voting, illegal immigrants are voting -- I mean, where are the street smarts of some of these politicians?”
And in August he said:
"And I'm telling you, November 8, we'd better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged," the New York billionaire told Fox News host Sean Hannity in one such example. "And I hope the Republicans are watching closely or it's going to be taken away from us."
And in March he said:
The whole thing with voter ID identification I think is really – I mean people are going to walk in, they are going to vote 10 times maybe. Who knows? They are going to vote 10 times. I am very concerned and I hope the Republicans are going to be very watchful and I hope the authorities are going to be very watchful.
But over the course of 14 years—2000 through 2014—there have been exactly … what for it ... 31 incidences of voter fraud.
I’ve been tracking allegations of fraud for years now, including the fraud ID laws are designed to stop, (said Justin Levitt is a professor with Loyola Law School, Los Angeles). In 2008, when the Supreme Court weighed in on voter ID, I looked at every single allegation put before the Court. And since then, I’ve been following reports wherever they crop up.
[New evidence that voter ID laws 'skew democracy' in favor of white Republicans]
To be clear, I’m not just talking about prosecutions. I track any specific, credible allegation that someone may have pretended to be someone else at the polls, in any way that an ID law could fix.
So far, I’ve found about 31 different incidents (some of which involve multiple ballots) since 2000, anywhere in the country. If you want to check my work, you can read a comprehensive list of the incidents below.
Yep, 31 out of a billion cast votes. Could someone repeat that over, and over, and over? It’s, like, a hu-g-g-ge number.
Sure there are people on voting lists who don’t belong there—people move, they die—but that doesn’t represent fraud in and of itself. The problem is, Trump cares a bigly amount about these things, until he doesn't.
“...I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election if I win."
Then, not so much.