The Briefing Room
General Category => National/Breaking News => Topic started by: EC on July 09, 2014, 08:15:40 pm
-
The new talking point is out.
Voter ID laws are back in the news this week after a group of college students joined a lawsuit challenging North Carolina's new restrictive rules. And as Catherine Rampell pointed out earlier this week, it's not just ID laws - Republican state legislatures have been busy devising all manner of creative ways to make voting more difficult for traditionally Democratic-leaning groups.
All of these restrictive measures take their justification from a perceived need to prevent "voter fraud." But there is overwhelming scholarly and legal consensus that voter fraud is vanishingly rare, and in fact non-existent at the levels imagined by voter ID proponents. That hasn't stopped many Republican lawmakers from crying "fraud" every time they're faced with an unfavorable election outcome (see also: McDaniel, Chris).
For reference, a round-up of the latest research is below. Let me know in the comments if I missed anything.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/09/7-papers-4-government-inquiries-2-news-investigations-and-1-court-ruling-proving-voter-fraud-is-mostly-a-myth/
-
sure