Beware: The Election Police Are Coming Thanks To GOP

Ron DeSantis and GOP Election Police

Photos: Brennan Center\Scott Olson\Twitter\YouTube

Since the 2020 elec­tion, the nation’s voting systems have been under unpre­ced­en­ted attack from multiple angles. Laws that make it harder to vote. Legis­la­tion that sabot­ages the elect­oral process. Threats and harass­ment direc­ted at elec­tion offi­cials. Extreme racial and partisan gerry­man­der­ing.

Enter another threat: “elec­tion police.”

As the New York Times repor­ted over the week­end, Repub­lican governors and legis­lat­ors are creat­ing new law enforce­ment agen­cies to aggress­ively pursue voter fraud alleg­a­tions. Earlier this month, the Flor­ida Legis­lature voted to create the Office of Elec­tion Crimes and Secur­ity. In Geor­gia, a bill moving through the legis­lature expands the Geor­gia Bureau of Invest­ig­a­tion’s power to pursue elec­tion viol­a­tions. An Arizona bill intro­duced by a state senator who wants to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion would create an “elec­tion bureau” to aggress­ively hunt down voter fraud. Texas already has its own “elec­tion integ­rity unit” — which it has beefed up over the last two years — in search of voter fraud to prosec­ute.

There’s one prob­lem: wide­spread voting fraud is a myth, and these meas­ures are a solu­tion likely to be far worse than the prob­lem.

How do we know this?

Because as the Times reports, Flor­ida elec­tion offi­cials made 75 refer­rals of possible elec­tion fraud during the 2020 elec­tion, accord­ing to the Flor­ida secret­ary of state’s office. Just four cases have been prosec­uted. Over the last two years, Texas’s elec­tion integ­rity unit has had about as much luck as Flor­ida. In 2020, the unit closed 17 cases. Last year, that number fell to three.

And in Wiscon­sin, its elec­tion commis­sion repor­ted that it had referred 95 incid­ents of people with a crim­inal record voting to local prosec­utors. All told, 16 people have been charged with a crime.

These numbers are par for the course. Lorraine Minnite, an expert in voter fraud at Rutgers Univer­sity, told the Times that the amount of voter fraud happen­ing does­n’t change much. “In an elec­tion of 130 million or 140 million people, it’s close to zero.”

Yet 62 percent of Repub­lic­ans — compared with just 19 percent of Demo­crats — say voter fraud is a major prob­lem, accord­ing to a recent poll from Monmouth Univer­sity.

This pred­ates Donald Trump’s Big Lie of a stolen elec­tion, but his cartoon­ish version has now become dogma. “As myths about wide­spread voter fraud become cent­ral to polit­ical campaigns and discourse, we’re seeing more of the high-profile attempts to make examples of indi­vidu­als, ” my colleague Wendy Weiser explained to the Times.

These efforts are clearly polit­ical, and its proponents are play­ing with fire. To create law enforce­ment squads to aggress­ively search for vanish­ingly rare fraud does­n’t just waste taxpayer money. It’s one more way partis­ans are using the myth of wide­spread voter fraud to cast doubt on free and fair elec­tions.

By continu­ing to discredit our elec­tion system without any evid­ence, these self-proclaimed protect­ors of demo­cracy are noth­ing but arson­ists.

By Michael Waldman\Brennan Center

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