‘Voter fraud’ attacks: Smoke without fire?

With less than three weeks left to go in the presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain is lagging somewhere around 8 points behind his Democratic challenger, Sen. Barack Obama. A New York Times poll released yesterday shows that the recent attacks by McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin (charging that Obama has been “palling around with a terrorist,” 60s radical turned college professor, Bill Ayers, and that he’s “not one of us”) have not only failed to put a dent in Obama’s lead, they’ve turned fickle independent voters against the Republican team. According to the Times, “Voters who said their opinions of Mr. Obama had changed recently were twice as likely to say they had grown more favorable as to say they had worsened. And voters who said that their views of Mr. McCain had changed were three times more likely to say that they had worsened than to say they had improved.”

So what now? Democrats say the McCain campaign has dipped into Karl Rove’s bag of dirty tricks for an oldie but a goodie: voter fraud. Citing bogus voter registration forms turned in by workers for ACORN, the McCain camp is now focused on one thing: the possibility that this election may be “stolen” by voter fraud. But those who study the issue say it is a rare occurrence inflated and used as a tool of something much more prevalent: voter intimidation and suppression.

McCain has been talking about the issue at rallies and on TV, while cable news and talk radio bloviators have been shouting their lungs out about reports of bogus registration forms being submitted by ACORN in several states (New Mexico among them). But the furor is noticeably concentrated on the right: between Friday and Monday, ACORN was mentioned on FOX News 342 times, according to media watchdog group Media Matters for America. By comparison, ACORN was mentioned 61 times on CNN.

“This is a strategic and cynical ploy, a deliberate attempt to decrease turnout, a smokescreen to allow them to aggressively try and make it harder for people to vote,” Obama for America campaign manager David Plouffe said Tuesday on a conference call with reporters.

The fuss has to do with ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which registered more than 1.3 million new voters in 18 states this year. Last week, a Republican National Committee spokesman called ACORN a “quasi-criminal group,” referring to reports of bogus registration forms being submitted in several states. (Mickey Mouse was alleged to have registered in Florida.)

But ACORN has a policy of flagging problematic registration forms and separating them out for election officials. In Albuquerque, Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver is investigating 1,400 suspicious cards, many of which were flagged by ACORN as problematic before being submitted; The organization has staff assigned specifically to verify cards and identify irregularities.

And as many Democratic observers have pointed out in the past few days, there is a difference between voter registration fraud and voter fraud. Last year, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law released a 50-page report about election fraud. Here’s the meat of it:

Allegations of election-related fraud make for enticing press … Voter fraud, in particular, has the feel of a bank heist caper: roundly condemned but technically fascinating, and sufficiently lurid to grab and hold headlines.

Perhaps because these stories are dramatic, voter fraud makes a popular scapegoat. In the aftermath of a close election, losing candidates are often quick to blame voter fraud for the results. Legislators cite voter fraud as justification for various new restrictions on the exercise of the franchise. And pundits trot out the same few anecdotes time and again as proof that a wave of fraud is imminent.

Allegations of widespread voter fraud, however, often prove greatly exaggerated. It is easy to grab headlines with a lurid claim (“Tens of thousands may be voting illegally!”); the follow-up — when any exists — is not usually deemed newsworthy. Yet on closer examination, many of the claims of voter fraud amount to a great deal of smoke without much fire. The allegations simply do not pan out.

In an interview with Salon.com posted today, Lori Minnite, a professor of political science at Barnard College who has been studying election fraud for the better part of 20 years says she does not believe that voter fraud poses a threat to the validity of American elections:

I am not privy to the campaign strategy of the Republican Party, but I have to assume that it is the result of a coordinated disinformation campaign aimed not only at undermining ACORN’s work, but also as a part of a far broader effort to corrode public confidence in the electoral process… I believe that what we are seeing are efforts to create mass public confusion, to turn people off, and to create chaos on Election Day. This is a campaign strategy to distract people from the voter suppression efforts that actually distort electoral outcomes and to preemptively discredit the potential Obama presidency as fraudulent.

Obama for America General Counsel Bob Bauer acknowledged Tuesday that there are problems with voter registration in some states. “The truth of the matter is that they will be able to surface instances where paid registration workers filled out bogus registrations — which they will be able to find because they’re caught, but [the registrations] do not correlate with illegal voting,” Bauer said. “At the end of the day there is no basis to believe that the system that is now working is allowing these to become actual threats to the voting system itself.”

This is the same issue that came up in the run-up to the 2006 elections, when U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, David Iglesias, was pushed by local Republican leaders to pursue allegations of voter fraud, also related to ACORN. After Iglesias (himself a Republican) refused, saying the allegations were without merit, he was fired. Last month, after a lengthy Department of Justice investigation, the U.S. Attorney General appointed a special prosecutor to pursue possible criminal charges against Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, the Republicans who pushed for his firing.

Maybe voter fraud will give McCain the traction he so desperately needs. Or maybe his paper tiger will come back to bite him in the ass.