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Voter impersonation
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Voter impersonation is a type of vote fraud in which a person claims to be someone else when casting a vote.
There is debate surrounding the extent to which this and other forms of voter fraud occur. John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky—with The Heritage Foundation, which describes itself as a conservative think tank—wrote that "the media aren’t doing our democracy any favors by summarily dismissing the existence of voter fraud – like the almost 1,200 proven cases in the Heritage Foundation’s election fraud database – while questioning the very need for accurate voter rolls."[1][2] According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy institute which describes itself as progressive, "The consensus from credible research and investigation is that the rate of illegal voting is extremely rare, and the incidence of certain types of fraud – such as impersonating another voter – is virtually nonexistent."[3][4]
This and other pages on Ballotpedia cover types of election and voter fraud for which there are documented cases and around which there is debate concerning the frequency of instances and proposed responses.
Relevant research
A sampling of research related to voter impersonation, arranged in reverse chronological order, is presented below.
Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation's Voter Fraud Database contained, as of December 2019, 13 cases dating back to 2004 in which one or more individuals were found to have voted after claiming to be a different person. This number included seven cases that took place in Texas, two cases that took place in Pennsylvania, and one case each that took place in Alabama, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Tennessee. Twelve of the cases involved a single person being charged with wrongdoing and one case involved two people who were charged with wrongdoing. Heritage states that its database contains a sampling of "election fraud cases from across the country, broken down by state, where individuals were either convicted of vote fraud, or where a judge overturned the results of an election."[5]
Government Accountability Office
In 2014, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which describes itself as "an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress," conducted a literature review of studies into voter fraud, including voter impersonation.[6] The GAO report referred to voter impersonation as in-person voter fraud. The review states, "Based on our review of these information sources, we found that various challenges and limitations in information available for estimating the incidence of in-person voter fraud make it difficult to determine a complete estimate of such fraud." The GAO report reviewed five academic studies of voter impersonation:[7]
- A 2013 review of votes cast nationwide on Election Day 2012 found "no significant indicators of voter impersonation fraud," although "the authors note that their survey has limited statistical power."
- A 2014 study that examined votes cast in the state of Ohio, in Miami, Florida, and in Daggett County, Utah, found no anomalies in voting patterns which would indicate that voter impersonation occurred. The GAO review adds, "the authors assume that fraudulent ballots will be created in a coordinated fashion by the perpetrators of the fraud," and "the older the elections, the fewer the number of actual voters in that election that were included in their analysis."
- A 2012 review of votes cast in Georgia on Election Day 2006 found five votes which were questionable and could indicate that voter impersonation took place, although "the authors indicate that the county registrars associated with the 5 questionable votes did not respond to their requests for information."
- A 2010 review of records from federal courts and state courts in four states between 1996 and 2005 turned up 48 individuals who were charged with violating federal election laws and one individual charged with violating state election laws. However, "obtaining complete information on all potential instances of voter fraud [is] difficult. The author notes that federal case information is difficult to review because the nature of a crime can be difficult to identify in charging documents."
- A 2012 review of 2,000 election fraud cases handled by law enforcement between 2000 and 2011 confirmed 10 instances of voter impersonation. However, "some state officials did not respond to the request for information...In some states’ responses to News21, important details about the case, including the circumstances of the alleged fraud, were missing."
Brennan Center for Justice
The Brennan Center for Justice released a report in 2007 authored by Justin Levitt in which he stated that "It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls." The study examined nine specific types of voter fraud; although voter impersonation was not one of the nine categories specifically examined, several of the categories, such as voting by dead voters, included cases involving voter impersonation.[8]
In 2014, The Washington Post published an article written by Levitt examining voter impersonation. In the article, Levitt said that he had turned up 31 cases of voter impersonation, some of which involved multiple ballots, since 2000.[9]
Case studies
This section provides a sample of two cases in which someone was convicted of voting under a different person's name.
- In 2004, Shasta Nicole Crayton pleaded guilty to having illegally voted in the November 2002 election. Crayton, who was not registered to vote, gave her sister's name to poll workers before casting a ballot in Tallapoosa County, Alabama. Poll workers noticed the discrepancy when her sister attempted to vote later that day and alerted the county sheriff. Crayton was sentenced to two years in prison, which was reduced to time served, and was fined $50 and court costs.[10]
- In 2017, Jeanene Johnson and Latunia Thomas each pleaded guilty to a single charge of unlawful deposit of ballot. The ballot was cast while the two were working as poll workers in Harris County, Texas, during the 2016 primary runoff election. Johnson assisted Thomas in casting a ballot in her daughter's name during the early voting period for the primary runoff. Both Johnson and Thomas served one day in jail.[11]
See also
- Electoral fraud
- Election governance by state
- Voting and election governance: Support and opposition topics
- Voting rights for convicted felons
- Voter identification laws by state
- Mail ballot collection and return laws by state
- Laws permitting noncitizens to vote in the United States
Footnotes
- ↑ The Heritage Foundation, "Voter Fraud Exists – Even Though Many in the Media Claim It Doesn’t," October 29, 2018
- ↑ The Heritage Foundation, "About Heritage," accessed February 10, 2020
- ↑ The Brennan Center, "Resources on Voter Fraud Claims," June 26, 2017
- ↑ The Brennan Center, "Progressive Groups Oppose White House Prison Reform Bill," April 18, 2018
- ↑ Ballotpedia queried the Heritage database for fraud which was classified as "Impersonation fraud at the polls".
- ↑ Government Accountability Office, "About GAO," accessed December 18, 2019
- ↑ Government Accountability Office, "Issues Related to State Voter Identification Laws," September 2014
- ↑ Brennan Center for Justice, "The Truth About Voter Fraud," 2007
- ↑ The Washington Post, "A comprehensive investigation of voter impersonation finds 31 credible incidents out of one billion ballots cast," August 6, 2014
- ↑ DocumentCloud, "Alabama CASES," accessed December 13, 2019
- ↑ Houston Chronicle, "Two poll workers plead guilty to illegal voting," May 23, 2017
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