If you talk to a liberal about voter fraud no doubt they’ll say it doesn’t exist. Show them a list of occurrences of voter fraud, like the one here, they’ll respond that ‘well…conservatives seek to suppress voting, and while an occasional illegal vote or two may happen, it’s a trivial problem and has never affected the outcome of an election.’ Wrong again. See the examples listed below.
Probables
There are at least four famous cases of voter fraud leading to invalid elections. It just so happens that each case features a Democrat as the offender, but I’m sure that’s just random <g>. I call these cases ‘probables’ because they’re unproven in any court of law.
- LBJ Lyndon Johnson’s fraudulent win in the 1948 Senate race is thoroughly documented in Robert Caro’s biography, and earned LBJ the nickname ‘Landslide Lyndon’. Wikipedia summarizes it thus: ‘Robert Caro argued in his 1989 book that Johnson had … stolen the election in Jim Wells County, and that 10,000 ballots were also rigged in Bexar County alone.’
- JFK Remember all those dead people voting in Illinois? As Slate magazine remembers it: ‘ “You gotta swallow this one,” says a Republican hack in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, referring to the 1960 election, in which John F. Kennedy prevailed. “They stole it fair and square.” ’
- Bob Dornan Loretta Sanchez beat the incumbent Bob Dornan (R-CA) in a 1996 contest widely regarded as fraudulent. As summarized in Wikipedia:
A task force found 748 votes that had been cast illegally—624 from non-citizens in addition to 124 that had already been thrown out by California officials. This was not enough to overturn Sanchez’ margin of victory and she was allowed to keep her seat. However, in consultation with the INS, the House committee identified as many as 4,700 questionable registration affidavits. The probe was dropped before these affidavits could be investigated.
- Al Franken Franken’s 2008 US Senate election in Minnesota is also widely regarded as fraudulent. He won by 312 votes in a recount. A Wall Street Journal editorial says:
at least 341 convicted felons voted in Minneapolis’s Hennepin County, the state’s largest, and another 52 voted illegally in St. Paul’s Ramsey County, the state’s second largest. … The number of felons voting in those two counties alone exceeds Mr. Franken’s victory margin.
Definites
Following are all cases of elections actually overturned due to voter fraud. Because they’re all judgments reached in a court of law I call them ‘definites’.
2005 Memphis TN State Senate 29th district
2012 Vernon CA city council
2013 Weslaco TX city commission
2013 Hidalgo, TX school board
2014 Havre MT Chippewa Cree tribal business committee
2015 Lorain OH city council
2015 Hazelhurst GA mayor
2015 Perth Amboy NJ city council
The Bottom Line
Don’t believe it when you hear that vote fraud doesn’t happen, or that it’s just trivial and there’s no impact. Remember “landslide Lyndon”, dead people voting in Illinois, and the examples listed above of voter fraud leading to invalidated elections.