If the simple fact that Mitt Romney's face is as white
as a KKK bedsheet doesn't win over his target voters, he can always
fall back on the kooky pop psychology of the Great Voter Fraud Hoax of
2012. This theory is held by purveyors of the myth that hordes of
unregistered impostors are prepared to show up at polling places and "impersonate"
registered voters if Americans fail to take drastic measures to stop
them. These imaginary "vote-scammers" — sketchily described as urban
blacks signed up fraudulently during voter-registration drives
conducted by federally funded agencies, or "illegal aliens" who purloin
dead people's Social Security numbers — are so widely feared by the far
right because they "tend to vote for Democrats."
The infamous ACORN case, which led to 22 convictions
in seven states after temporary workers registered ineligible or
fictitious voters, involved cases of registration fraud, not
impersonation fraud. "Mickey Mouse has been registered hundreds of times
but Mickey has never turned up on Election Day to vote," said Richard Hasen, a professor of political science and election law expert.
Yet Republican alarmists insist that, as GOP presidential candidate John McCain said
during a 2008 debate, fraudulent registrations collected by ACORN were
"one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe
destroying the fabric of democracy." (The Congressional Research
Service "found no instances" of anyone who was "allegedly registered to vote improperly "by ACORN actually "attempting to vote at the polls."
Even though voters are less likely to be victimized by "voter fraud" than they are to report sighting a UFO,
the GOP embarked in 2011 on a nationwide effort to "shut down" this
virtually nonexistent phenomenon. (News21, a national investigative
reporting project, revealed earlier this month that only 10 instances of voter-impersonation fraud
have occurred nationwide since 2000 — a period when 146 million people
were registered to vote. The infinitesimal amount of in-person voter
fraud that actually occurred equaled one out of about every 15 million
prospective voters.)
Nevertheless, 34 states since 2011 have proposed or passed laws requiring that voters show state-approved photo ID cards
at the polls. In other states, early voting days and extended voting
hours have been curtailed — including Ohio, where Republican Secretary
of State John Husted attempted to prohibit early voting in
Democratic-majority counties while encouraging it in Republican-majority
counties. Progressive pundits soon shamed him into abandoning his
shamelessly partisan plan. In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott even tried to purge "non-residents"
from the state's voter rolls, until an analysis of a submitted list of
2,700 names revealed that 87 percent of the people on the list were
minorities.
If Republicans can't persuade more angry white men to
turn out for their lackluster candidate, the Mittster still has one more
ace up his sleeve. Anticipating a dearth of minority and female voters,
Republicans recruited what they claim will be one million "True the
Vote" poll-watchers. Should any straggling minority Dems make it through
the gauntlet of GOP speed bumps and onto the threshold of the voting
booth, this volunteer goon squad has promised to kick in, kick butt, and
even Romney's troubling odds.
