Talk:Voter impersonation in the United States

"voter impersonation should be made illegal"?

I'm not an attorney, but I believe that voter impersonation is fraud and is already criminal in all 50 states. Is there any evidence that it's not?

This claim should be reworded or removed -- unless clear evidence can be provided proving that it's NOT illegal in some jurisdiction in the US. DavidMCEddy (talk) 20:09, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

• I agree that this sentence, although sourced, is confusing and unclear, and so have removed it. Everymorning (talk) 23:07, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm loath to completely discard the reference to a potentially relevant paper in a law journal. The article begins, "The act of impersonation, where a person votes as some other person, living, dead, or fictitious, is a crime in many democratic jurisdictions." A footnote then mentions India, the UK, and South Africa, claiming, "The situation in the USA is discussed throughout the article." On p. 169, they say, "[I]n many jurisdictions, perhaps most saliently the USA, there may be very good political and/or practical reasons for both widening voting mechanisms and for not making the barriers to registration and voting too onerous or complex. ... [M]easures such as postal voting, and generally the relaxing of administrative barriers to registration and voting, increase the opportunities for personation."

However, unless someone can provide further evidence that it's NOT criminal in the US, I'm content to leave this reference in this Talk page. I could not find other references to the US in that paper. I remember hearing in August, 2016, a claim that voter impersonation was already a crime, at least in Kansas and I think Missouri, punishable by perhaps as much as 15 years in prison, though the penalties probably vary between states in the US.

And I've not heard anyone suggesting doing away with such criminal penalties. Indeed, the Secretary of State of Kansas requested and received in 2015 the power to prosecute such cases. And he got all of two convictions in almost a year. (A Kansas City Star editorial suggested this was a Republican witch hunt, and Kobach “should be stripped of his power to prosecute these cases.”) DavidMCEddy (talk) 23:53, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

References

Bundling footnotes

User:Shaded0 removed one of seven footnotes in a single place, because of WP:CITEKILL. I restored the one deletion while bundling all seven, per Wikipedia:Citing sources#Bundling citations.

WP:CITEKILL says, "Two or three may be a good way of preventing linkrot for online sources or providing a range of sources that support the fact, but more than three should usually be avoided; if more than three are truly beneficial as an additional range, consider bundling (merging) the citations."

I therefore bundled all these references while restoring the one that was deleted. This is such a controversial topic, I think it's useful to keep all seven footnotes. DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:56, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

The Wash Times piece about driving licenses in NH has nothing to do with voter impersonation

This rubbish Wash Times story about people using out-of-state driving licenses when voting in New Hampshire has nothing to do with voter impersonation[1]. There is as far as I know nothing that prohibits someone with an out of state license from voting in NH and there's no reason to expect that they're not allowed to vote because of it. Here's a story by AP (an actual reliable source) about this horseshit, which makes it clear that there's nothing here that demonstrates voter impersonation or voter fraud[2]. 19:00, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Not A Thorough List

This is not a very thorough list of voter fraud. There is a better list here:

• Voter Fraud — Preceding unsigned comment added by ExportTester (talk • contribs) 20:54, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

• I don't think Wikipedia needs to copy Conservapedia. In Wikipedia articles on controversial topics "the two sides actually engaged each other and negotiated a version of the article that both can more or less live with. This is a rare sight indeed in today’s polarized political atmosphere, where most online forums are echo chambers for one side or the other”, according to Peter Binkley in an invited 2006 article for the Canadian Library Association magazine Feliciter. No source is perfect. However, the rules of evidence in refereed academic journals is plausibility among other leading experts. The rules of evidence in legal proceedings in the US tend to be more adversarial and perhaps tighter than typical refereed academic journals. By contract, the rules of evidence in the mainstream media seems to be whatever most advances the social status of those who control media funding and governance. And the rules of evidence for a source like Conservapedia seems to be constrained by how well any source fits with their ideology. DavidMCEddy (talk) 00:43, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

I note that your source is about “voter fraud,” including false registrations and absentee ballot fraud, and no one disputes those things happen, and voter ID laws do nothing to stop them. But this article is specifically about impersonation, which voter ID laws purportedly seek to stop, despite numerous studies finding it exceedingly rare. soibangla (talk) 02:02, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

References

Agreed. I remember when history books would give notable examples dating back hundreds of years. The only thing I see here is a statement that Trump made accusations of fraud in his election and a bunch of people saying it's rarely common. I also remember watching period pieces 20 years ago that would portray it happening in the early 1900's. Wikipedia is a joke. Jawz101 (talk) 04:52, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

... the articles is even intentionally not labeled fraud and commenters argue that impersonation is not a form of fraud. Redefining fraud to exclude impersonation, forgery, or basically any form of intentional misrepresentation Jawz101 (talk) 04:57, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

... is fraud Jawz101 (talk) 04:58, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Could foreign interference and hacking be considered voter fraud?

I am not talking about the narrative that is continually pushed by conservatives and Trump, such as thousands of illegals (or at least their definition of "illegals") compromising American elections. We know based on the empirical evidence that that type of voter fraud is rare. What I am talking about is foreign interference in the elections. Remember the Russian interference in the elections of 2016, 2018 and 2020? At least most of the 2016 interference was not voter fraud per se, but it did stir up ire and chaos in the political system. Russia was basically acting as if it were the 51st state of the United States, unlawfully casting its vote to compromise democracy. Now it seems that they (and possibly other enemy countries) are engaged in hardcore tactics such as hacking and manipulating the electoral system, and it is possible that in doing so, the hackers can cast their votes looking as if they came from real American citizens. That would make a good case of voter fraud. Is this in any way relevant to this article, or are the separate articles on the interferences sufficient? GaɱingFørFuɲ³⁶⁵ 21:56, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Can you find documents published by sources that are normally considered reliable saying that hackers are casting "votes looking as if they came from real American citizens" when they are not coming from those citizens?

If you can find such, then I would support, e.g., adding a new subsection under "Reporting and investigation: with a title something like "2020 vote fraud allegations".

The sources don't have to be unimpeachable, only plausible, generally considered reliable, and their claims accurately described in neutral terms, e.g., "On 18 October 2019 ABC News alleged that ...", and cite a source that contains claims appropriately summarized in what you write.

If your most reliable sources are publications like the National Enquirer, then I might not support including anything here unless you found a large number of such sources. In the latter case, I would suspect to find stories in more mainstream publications summarizing these claims as questionable, likely false, or vastly overstated. Then the section might be modeled after the Wikipedia article on "Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories", only on a much smaller scale.

Thanks for asking. DavidMCEddy (talk) 00:33, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Serious problems with article requiring major changes or deletion?

The problems with this article are numerous, to the point where it might be better deleted than continuing in its current form:

• There is a long history of voter fraud in the US, real and imagined, which seems to be entirely left out of this article, with literally nothing on the topic addressing its history prior to 1968. One could read the article and believe that there has never been any voting fraud in US history, a laughable proposition. There's a great Wiki article on LBJ's Senate election in 1948; surely fake ballots count as "voter impersonation"?

This article begins, "Voter impersonation ... is a form of electoral fraud in which a person who is eligible to vote in an election votes more than once, or ... by voting under the name of an eligible voter." "Fake ballots" and LBJ's Senate election of 1948 seem different to me. DavidMCEddy (talk) 21:23, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

• Most of the article seems to be a long (and slanted) screed arguing against Voter ID laws (which have their own article). For example, the "University of California, San Diego study (2017)" section has nothing to do with voter fraud, other than as a purported justification for Voter ID laws.
• Half the introduction to the article is about President Trump's unsupported claims, which can't possibly be among the most relevant facts about the entire topic.
• Why is the article called "Voter impersonation" and not "Voter fraud", when it includes the issue of illegal aliens and non-citizens voting, which is not "impersonation" but a different sort of "fraud"?

I've made some relatively minor edits because the article had a passage without citation that suggested the Pew report found that there was "no evidence of voter fraud" — which is true, but only because the report didn't look for or address fraud at all. He also made broader statements about the lack of voter fraud, but not in the context of "even with the out-of-date data". Bizarrely, this is also covered under an entire section, "Pew Report (2012)" — which is about how the Pew Report has nothing to do with the subject of the article! Another prime example of what a mess this article is.

I also removed a sentence: "On the contrary, inefficiencies in the electoral system resulted in 51 million American citizens being prevented from registering to vote…" as it isn't relevant to the article topic and isn't "contrary" to anything preceding.

I'm sure someone who works on this page can come up with better — and I'm happy to contribute any way I can. Else, perhaps it should be considered for deletion? Thanks! Elle Kpyros (talk) 19:08, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

This article has received 134 total edits by 57 editors since it was created 2015-12-09. It has attracted 42,327 pageviews since 2017-07-05. I don't think it would be sensible to try to delete it at this point.

However, I agree that there is a need for an article with a name like "Electoral fraud in the United States", and there isn't one. Meanwhile, this article has attracted edits relating to that, since it's far easier (and often more sensible) to edit an existing article than create a new one.

Further, I would support "Electoral fraud in the United States" as the name, because there is already a Category:Electoral fraud in the United States, and this article carries that category.

Also, I think we should create "Vote fraud in the United States", being an alias, autoforwarded to "Electoral fraud in the United States". This latter title is what came first to my mind, but the English language is defined by usage, not by me ;-) I would support also creating "Voter fraud in the United States" as another alias autoforwarded to this article.

Wikipedia has an article entitled "Wikipedia:Moving a page" describing how to change the name of an article like this. If you can create the time to read that article and follow the process outlined therein, I would support that (though I don't see myself creating the time to take the lead in that).

Thanks for raising this issue. DavidMCEddy (talk) 19:52, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree with the concerns discussed above -- namely that there is no general voting fraud in the U.S. article, and this article deals with a subset of fraud, voter impersonation, but redirects from voter fraud generally. It is also is focused on contemporary issues in voter fraud -- which would be fine, except historical examples like LBJ's senate election are neglected. I'm not experienced enough to feel confident in addressing this problem comprehensively. This looks to me like it should be a sub part of a much larger article. JArthur1984 — Preceding undated comment added 15:45, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

At this moment 2022-06-21 this article includes 100 "References" to sources routinely considered credible by most Wikipedians. That's far too much material to be absorbed in another article. To make this article a candidate for deletion, most of those references would have to be removed on claims that they weren't relevant or were improperly described, and I don't see any evidence of that. DavidMCEddy (talk) 16:45, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

DavidMcEddy your point is persuasive to me. I agree that the material here is good (for what it addresses). We would not want this much good work lost. What is the solution - expand this current article in scope? JArthur1984 (talk) 21:14, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't see a need for any major change. DavidMCEddy (talk) 21:23, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Serious problems redux

I am a wikipedia editing know nothing, but isn't there some type of rational oversight that prevents such biased drivel from being published..I mean this is just ridiculous.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rickbadertscher (talk • contribs) 22:27, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

@Rickbadertscher: Wikimedia Foundation rules asks people to write from a neutral point of view citing credible sources.

Informally "bias" refers to something that conflicts with my preconceptions. In scientific circles and in Wikimedia Foundation projects, "bias" means a systematic deviation from the best available evidence.

The rules of evidence in the court of public opinion is whatever will maximize the power of those who control the money for the media. The rules of evidence in a court of law are sometimes more balanced, actually requiring evidence. In Fish v. Kobach, Judge Julie Robinson, appointed to the bench by US President George W. Bush, a Republican, concluded that then-Kansas Secretary of state Kris Kobach had prevented almost 1,000 US citizens from registering to vote for every non-citizen he could find who had registered. The question of non-citizens registering to vote is different but related to voter impersonation.

For a summary of my work in this and related issues, I invite you to review Wikiversity:Electoral integrity in the United States. An alternative perspective is provided by Wikiquote:Paul Weyrich, especially his 1980 remarks to a religious roundtable, where he ridiculed his colleagues who wanted good government saying they had "The Goo-Goo Syndrome: Good Government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. ... [O]ur leverage in the elections goes up as the voting populous goes down."

If you have substantive documentation that this article is biased, I want to know. So far, all the serious evidence I have found suggests that the claims of voter impersonation and widespread voter fraud seem like a cover for big money efforts to divide the body politic and make it easier to pick their pockets.

Thanks for your support of Wikipedia. DavidMCEddy (talk) 00:47, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

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