“Anyone who denies the existence of voter fraud in the U.S. needs to go to Heritage's online database, where they will find 1,285 proven instances of it—including 1,110 criminal convictions.” - Newt Gingrich
Sure, and the most egregious case was in North Carolina conducted by a Republican operative. Voter fraud is real, but…
Let’s look at context which in this case is all about scale. The population of the United States is 328.2 million. 1,300 cases out of 328 million persons. Really? That’s so small you need to use scientific notation even to look at the percentage. It is so small only our virologists can comprehend it. Newt cries out that Oregon mails all their residents ballots which makes them ripe for fraud.
Let’s assume for one moment that all Newt’s cited cases occurred in Oregon, which we know they didn’t, well, Oregon’s population sits at 4.2 million making those 1285 cases as 0.03%. Sure, we cannot claim voter fraud does not exist. That would be an absolutist statement readily proven false. Numbers matter. Comparisons matter too. How many more get wrongly disenfranchised?
“Voter ID laws have been estimated by the U.S. Government Accountability Office to reduce voter turnout by 2-3 percentage points, translating to tens of thousands of votes lost in a single state.” - ACLU
Five figures on merely one voter suppression tactic versus barely four figures on the side of fraud. Here’s another tactic adding another five figures:
“In 2011, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach championed a law requiring Kansans to show “proof of citizenship” documents in order to register to vote, citing false claims of noncitizen voting. Most people don’t carry the required documents on hand — like a passport, or a birth certificate — and as a result, the law blocked over 30,000 Kansans from voting.”
A third tactic nearly reaches six figures:
”In the 2016 presidential election, over 90,000 New Yorkers were unable to vote because their applications did not meet the 25-day cutoff”
Whereas voter purges are hitting eight figures, which with a total population being nine figures, has significance.
“A recent Brennan Center study found that almost 16 million voters were purged from the rolls between 2014 and 2016”
“Pelosi and the Democrats are using the virus as an excuse to impose on the country these voting laws and other far-left ideas.” — Newt Gingrich
Yes, far left ideas like seen in
Utah.
“Utah officials for years have praised voting by mail and said they have seen it cause no extra fraud.”
“[Lt. Gov. Spencer] Cox has said that by-mail voting also appeared to improve voter education “because they actually have the ballot, and they have the opportunity to research what is on the ballot — instead of just getting in the ballot booth and finding out there are three constitutional amendments they had never heard of.””
“Cox also criticized videos of Wisconsin voters standing in long lines risking their lives during the coronavirus outbreak to vote.”
The fraud here is in claiming fraud. Someone is playing on our numerical ignorance and lack of scientific rigor. Someone is being a manipulative shit.