Voting fraud

“ An election contest, however, usually addresses allegations of fraud in voting, or mistake or irregularity in election administration, that has resulted in the wrong candidate having been found to have received the most votes in the election, or which has made the ascertainment of the winner “reasonably uncertain.” Courts have been historically cautious in interfering with and overturning the results of a popular election on the basis of allegations of fraud or election irregularities. ”

“ Now, right here, I want you to observe that this shows the real defects in our system of government. In the first place, our Government is being governed by fraud. If the very fountain of power is poisoned by fraud, then the whole Government is impure. We must find out some way to prevent fraudulent voting in the United States or our Government is a failure. Great cities were the mothers of election frauds. ”

“ A lawyer faces fines, jail, and loss of his or her license for making frivolous or false claims. The lawyers for the Trump campaign never alleged widespread fraud or illegal voting had impacted Pennsylvania’s elections because those claims are false.
When our colleagues indulge in this political theatre and endorse fringe conspiracy theories, they may think there are no consequences because they know that this time the majorities of the House and Senate will overrule them. But as the entire world saw today, their baseless claims of election fraud do have consequences. ”

“ President Trump also asked his own Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate allegations of election fraud in an effort to change the outcome. At his direction, Attorney General William P. Barr authorized prosecutors “‘to pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections in your jurisdictions in certain cases,’ particularly where the outcome of an election could be affected.” ”

“ No person shall, directly or indirectly, use, or threaten to use, force, coercion, violence, restraint, or undue influence, or inflict, or threaten to inflict, harm or damage on any person, in order to induce him to vote, or refrain from voting, for any candidate, party, or measure. No minister, priest, or officer of a church, shall otherwise than by public speech or print persuade any voter to vote or refrain from voting for any candidate, party, or measure. No person shall, by abduction, fraud, or duress, impede or prevent any voter in the free exercise of the franchise in any election. ”

“ Said electoral reforms seek to modernize the entire electoral process, to include extending the mechanisms for voting of those absent from their voting centers -- by availing of the new electronic technology to contain electoral fraud ”

“ He cannot approach nearer than the corner of the building in which the votes are being deposited, nor can he leave his post and come closer to the polls, unless some serious disturbance, where lives are threatened, occurs, with which the police of the district cannot cope. Since the minority is represented during the time of voting, and during the count by a man selected for that purpose, no fraud could{342} well be perpetrated without the consent of someone responsible to the opposition. ”

“ The evil results of election frauds do not expend themselves upon the voters who are robbed of their rightful influence in public affairs. The individual or community or party that practises or connives at election frauds has suffered irreparable injury, and will sooner or later realize that to exchange the American system of majority rule for minority control is not only unlawful and unpatriotic, but very unsafe for those who promote it. The disfranchisement of a single legal elector by fraud or intimidation is a crime too grave to be regarded lightly. ”

“ Is it not evident that our present tendencies are in the wrong direction? The rapidly increasing use of money in elections, for the undisguised purchase of votes, and the growing disposition to tamper with the ballot and the tally-sheet, are some of the symptoms. . . . Do you think that you will convince the average election officer that it is a great crime to cheat in the return of votes, when he knows that a good share of those votes have been purchased with money? No; the machinery of the election will not be kept free from fraud while the atmosphere about the polls reeks with bribery. ”

“ Another thing—and I cannot say it too often—fraud at the ballot-box undermines all respect in the minds of the people for the Government. When they are satisfied that the election is a fraud they despise the officers elected. When they are satisfied it is a fraud, they despise the law made by the legislators. When they are satisfied it is a fraud, they hold in utter contempt the decisions of our highest and most august tribunals. ”

“ The law was adopted, no doubt, with the object of preventing frauds at elections for members of Congress, but it does not seem to have occurred to its authors that the States are as much interested as the general government in guarding against frauds at those elections and in maintaining their purity, and, if possible, more so, as their principal officers are elected at the same time. If fraud be successfully perpetrated in any case, they will be the first and the greatest sufferers. ”

“ Election boards are bi-partisan and each party has its own machinery, not only of election officials but watchers and challengers, to see that the opposing party commits no fraud. The watchfulness of this party machinery, plus an increasingly vigilant public opinion, has corrected many of the election frauds which were once common and most elections are now probably free from all the baser forms of corruption. When a question on referendum is sincerely espoused by both the dominant parties it has the advantage of the watchfulness of both party machines and is doubly safeguarded from fraud. ”

“ Wherever this habitually occurs, the rule of a few moneyed men has been substituted for a government by the people.
In the elections of large cities, of populous states and of the nation at large, it can seldom happen that bribery of voters, either by retail or wholesale, is sufficient to alter the result. To supply this deficiency other means are more and more being resorted to. To assure success, where the number of voters renders the simpler measure for overcoming the people’s will unreliable, party managers now make use of finesse and fraud. ”

“ To the contrary, since Election Day, President Trump has done everything in his power, including taking steps beyond his lawful authority, to convince his supporters that they are victims of the greatest electoral fraud in history. He has blamed this “fraud” on state officials, state courts, federal courts, the media, Congress, and election administrators. He has convinced many of his supporters, falsely, that they actually voted him back into power and that their votes—indeed, their fundamental rights—have fallen victim to an array of nefarious forces working against them. ”

“ Under the laws of every state, the Trump Campaign was entitled to bring legal challenges to the administration of the election in any state where it felt aggrieved, and it took ample advantage of these opportunities, bringing scores of lawsuits alleging “wide-spread fraud,” requesting recounts, or demanding that votes cast for the Democratic candidate be thrown out or simply not counted. ”

“ It would be impossible for the nation to lurch back now to the loose and hugger-mugger system under which both State and national elections were held fifty or sixty years ago. The “repeater” has been largely eliminated; the way of the venal voter has been made hard; official ballots have replaced the tricky things that party-workers used to “hand out”; corrupt-practice acts and registration laws have weeded out a great deal of the bribery and fraud that were formerly common. ”

“ The perpetuity of our institutions rests upon the maintenance of a free ballot, an honest count, and correct returns. We denounce the fraud and violence practiced by the Democracy in Southern States, by which the will of a voter is defeated, as dangerous to the preservation of free institutions; and we solemnly arraign the Democratic party as being the guilty recipient of fruits of such fraud and violence. ”

“ In every single swing state, local officials, state officials, almost all Democrats, made illegal and unconstitutional changes to election procedures, without the mandated approvals by the state legislatures, that these changes pave the way for fraud on a scale never seen before, and I think we can go a long way outside of our country when I say that. ”

“ But in crimes of violence the record is enormously against this period in comparison with that; the infliction of penalties by the Courts was then more certain than it is now. And as to ballot-box stuffing and frauds in elections, surely the worst ever charged against the manipulators of that period, pales and sinks into insignificance when compared with the colossal fraud committed in San Francisco, in 1876, by which not only the will of the people of the State was overborne, but also the will of the people of the United States. ”

“ It concerns the honor of the nation that fraud shall not prevail or have a chance of prevailing. If a fraudulent count is possible, it is of little consequence how my vote or the votes of others be cast; for the supreme will is not that of the honest voter, but of the dishonest counter; and, when fraud succeeds, or is commonly thought to have succeeded, the public conscience, shocked at first, becomes weakened by acquiescence ”

“ That same forty-five per cent are of course easily made the subjects of fraud or violence, and we face this dilemma: they may either use their power wrongfully, or be wrongfully deprived of the exercise of their ballotorial rights. Either alternative is alike dangerous. If we suppose the illiterate voter to be either misled or intimidated, or prevented from exercising his judgment and his equality of right with others in the control of our government, then we have the voice of this forty-five per cent silenced—whether by intimidation or by fraud matters not. ”

“ To safeguard the final elections while leaving the proceedings for proposing candidates unregulated, is to postpone regulation until it is comparatively futile. And Congress might well conclude that, if the nominating procedure were to be left open to fraud, bribery, and corruption, or subject to the more insidious, but (in the opinion of Congress) nevertheless harmful, influences resulting from an unlimited expenditure of money in paid propaganda and other purchased campaign activities, representative government would be endangered. ”

“ The manipulation of the votes of {423} individuals through improper methods has been the cause of fraud and a means of thwarting the will of the people. It is well that the various states and cities have observed this and set themselves to the task of making laws to guard properly the ballot-box and give free, untrammelled expression to the will of the people. ”

“ To cast an illegal vote should be considered by all as a crime. We must if possible get rid of the mob—the vagrants, the vagabonds who have no home and who take no interest in the cities where they vote. We must get rid of the rich mob too; and by the rich mob I mean the men who buy up these vagabonds. Various States have passed laws for the registration of voters; but they all leave wide open all the doors of fraud. Men are allowed to vote if they have been for one year in the State, and thirty or sixty days in the ward or precinct ”

“ The Republican party has always stood for election reforms. No measure tending to secure the ballot-box against fraud has ever been opposed by its representatives. I am not here to make imputations; I submit this general suggestion: Find me the party that sets the gate of election frauds open, or holds it open, and I will show you the party that expects to drive cattle that way. [Applause.] Let us as citizens, irrespective of party, unite to exalt the name of Indiana by making her election laws models of justice and severity, and her elections free from the taint of suspicion. ”

“ The leaders just spoke about setting aside the election. Let me be clear. I am not arguing for setting aside the result of this election. All of us are faced with two choices, both of which are lousy. One choice is vote against the objection, and tens of millions of Americans will see a vote against the objection as a statement that voter fraud doesn’t matter, isn’t real, and shouldn’t be taken seriously. And a great many of us don’t believe that. ”

“ The principle of majority rule, however, does not foreclose practical adjustments designed to protect the election machinery from t e ever-present dangers of abuse and fraud. Indeed, unless such adjustments are made, the democratic process may be perverted and the election may fail to reflect the will of the majority of the electorate. One of the commonest protective devices is to require that challenges to the eligibility of voters be made prior to the actual casting of ballots, so that all uncontested votes are given absolute finality. ”

“ On the 20th of February, 1873, the Committee on Privileges and Elections of the Senate made a report in which they say they were satisfied by testimony that the manipulation of the election machinery by Warmoth and others was equivalent to 20,000 votes; and they add that to recognize the McEnery government "would be recognizing a government based upon fraud, in defiance of the wishes and intention of the voters of the State." ”