Lewis Black, the ACLU and Voting Rights

This needs very little explanation.



No explanation needed, but let's talk voter fraud for a moment.

Now the fact is that the actual number voter impersonation fraud cases are actually very small in this country.  How small?

Well according to a comprehensive analysis conducted by the Washington Post, in conjunction with a law professor from Loyola University, the number works out to be...

31 out of a billion votes cast.

For you math heads out there, that's rate of fraud working out to...

0.0000000031%

You can read the article HERE.  I think your odds of gaining super-human strength and the ability to shoot lasers out of your eyes are greater than the actual occurrence of voter fraud by impersonation in this country.  But you know what?  Just to be fair, let's take the step of assuming that the Loyola University study is dramatically under-counting voter fraud by a factor of a thousand.  Yes, a thousand.  What would the rate of voter fraud by impersonation look like then?

0.0000031%

I'm still thinking that the odds of me  getting lasers to come out of eyeballs are greater than the actual occurrence of voter fraud by impersonation.

Let's take the argument, just for fun, that requiring a picture ID is a reasonable thing to do in order to prevent that minuscule amount of fraud.  This is one of the go-to arguments made in support of such laws.  Here's my retort:  intersections.  Yes, intersections.

You see, requiring all motorists to stop at every single intersection would no-doubt prevent needless pedestrian deaths, would it not?  Of course it would!  So let's have every state legislature pass a law that requires all motorists to stop at every single intersection, all the time, every time.  Come on, that sounds like a great idea, does it not?  

Well of course the above idea is not a good idea...in fact it's a STUPID idea!  It's a solution in search of a problem...an over-reach and over-reaction of government...but it's the same basic argument made by supporters of voter ID laws.  Could it be that the prevention of incredibly small amounts of voter fraud* maybe, just maybe, isn't the intent of the many voter ID laws?  You can be the judge.

In the final analysis, I do believe that many individuals...outside of the political class that is...who support voter ID laws are doing so because they think it is the right thing to do.  The problem though is that such laws really are not a good idea simply because they represent a big and intrusive solution to an incredibly small (to the point of not existing) problem.  The laws themselves are the real fraud.






(*) Sitting Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, in attempting to defend the state's voter ID law, could not point to a single case of voter fraud that he, as state Attorney General, had prosecuted.