Voter Fraud: A Threat to Democracy, or a Myth?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: Voter Fraud: A Threat to Democracy, or a Myth?

Air Date: November 7, 2017

Host: David Remnick
Guests: John Fund (National Review columnist), Lorraine Minnite (Political Scientist), Trey Petlin (Attorney), Jelani Cobb (New Yorker writer)

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Main Theme

This episode examines the contentious debate around voter fraud in America: Is it a genuine threat to democracy or a largely fabricated myth with deeply partisan undertones? Host David Remnick explores individual cases, legal battles, and research findings, featuring perspectives from advocates for stricter voting laws, legal practitioners, and academic researchers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Low Voter Turnout and the "Problem" of Too Many (or the Wrong) People Voting

• Context: Remnick introduces America’s historically low voter turnout, contrasting the country’s self-image as a democratic beacon with persistent apathy. He notes a recent political shift: some say the real issue is now “too many—or the wrong kind of—people voting.”
• Quote:

  "For generations, the truth of American democracy has been that we seem not to like it very much. ... In recent years, some in the political world have diagnosed a new problem. Too many people voting. Or maybe better put the wrong kind of people." —David Remnick [00:19]

2. The Case of Kris Kobach and the Gatkes: Real-World Voter Fraud Prosecutions

• Case Study:
  • Kris Kobach (Kansas' Secretary of State) championed strong anti-fraud laws, citing allegations of double voting.
  • The Gatkes, retirees and Republicans, were investigated for supposed double voting during a move; no actual fraud was found in Betty Gatke’s case; Steve Gatke pled to a minor misdemeanor due to confusion.
• Observations:
  • Most cases in Kansas involved registered Republicans, not undocumented immigrants.
  • Voter fraud prosecutions are exceedingly rare.
• Quote:

  "In my research… it was clear that voting crimes are extremely rare. Not only had I not had one, I hadn’t heard of one… I’ve done criminal defense for 23 years. It’s not charged. And the reason it’s not charged is because it doesn’t happen." —Trey Petlin [04:14]

3. The Conservative View: John Fund Argues for Stricter Protections

• Argument: Fund supports the notion that voter fraud exists, especially in close elections, but admits it occurs on both sides—sometimes for incentives as little as “a bottle of bourbon.”
• Difficulty in Proof: He claims impersonation voter fraud is hidden and hard to detect, likening it to insider trading or tax evasion: just because convictions are rare doesn't mean crime isn't happening.
• Quote:

  "If you go to the SEC and you ask them, 'How many cases of insider trading violations do you have?' ... They will tell you, 'We know there's a lot of them, but we know it's almost impossible to detect unless we have an informant.'" —John Fund [06:28]

• Skepticism of Studies: Fund dismisses studies finding near-zero fraud due to supposed undetectability.
• The Motor Voter Law Debate: Fund repeats a debunked claim that "eight of the 9/11 hijackers" were registered voters due to lax registration, but backtracks under questioning, admitting his number was wrong and based on a dated tip.
• Quote:

  "You accused me of reporting a falsehood. I would simply tell you some of them. It was not eight. It was a lower number." —John Fund [09:13]

4. Problems with Purging Voter Rolls & Bureaucratic Incompetence

• Remnick’s Point: Overaggressive efforts to clean up voter rolls can disenfranchise legitimate voters (e.g., NYC’s erroneous purge of 100,000 voters).
• Fund’s Response: He calls for more competent bureaucracy and poll worker training, but resists nationalized, federally monitored standards for elections, citing constitutional precedent.
• Quote:

  "We need to have better voter rolls. And we need to also train a whole new generation of pol..." —John Fund [10:20]

5. Should the Focus Be on Voter Fraud or Voter Suppression?

• Remnick pushes Fund to clarify whether isolated fraud is worth national focus when evidence is scant and when strict laws risk suppressing turnout; Fund deflects, saying “we can do both”—making it “easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
• Fund claims to have approached civil rights groups with proposals for universal voter ID cards, which he says were met with “very little interest.”
• Quote:

  "Let's convert the Social Security card into an ID card for voting purposes only, with a photograph on it. The cost would be minimal... Let's get them an id. I've had very little interest in this." —John Fund [11:21]

6. Academic Perspective: Lorraine Minnite and the (Lack of) Evidence for Voter Fraud

• Research Process: Minnite, author of "The Myth of Voter Fraud," conducted exhaustive research: surveys, interviews, public records, and expert testimony in court cases. She consistently found no systemic voter fraud even where voter ID laws were hotly debated.
• Quote:

  "I've looked for years and I have looked in multiple ways ... and no one else has come up with it." —Lorraine Minnite [16:49]

• Why Perpetuate the Myth?
  • Minnite asserts that fraud fears tap into race/class-based prejudices and form a pretext for stricter laws. These disproportionately affect poor and minority voters, groups associated with Democrats.
  • Quote:

    "It's tapping into attitudes that are really deep in American culture and racially charged and class-based ... Those stricter rules have disproportionate effects on people who are poor." —Lorraine Minnite [17:04]

• Historical Context: The myth of voter fraud is echoic of historic voter suppression tactics (poll taxes, literacy tests) but has shifted to new targets (Latinos, undocumented immigrants).
• Rationality of Fraud: Minnite notes that “voter fraud” is an irrational individual act: the costs (felony charge, deportation) far outweigh the negligible benefit of a single extra vote.
• Quote:

  "It's an almost irrational act, which is voting, and then to say ... I'm going to possibly face even a felony conviction ... to cast one more vote. What do you get for it?" —Lorraine Minnite [19:59]

7. Vote Buying and Historical Corruption: Past vs Present

• Vote buying (e.g., cash for votes in poor communities) has existed, but modern safeguards make this rarely effective or undetectable.
• Historic election manipulation (Tammany Hall, saloon politics) is not reflective of the current era; most evidence of widespread fraud is from a long-gone American past.

8. Myths about 9/11 Hijackers and 'Motor Voter' Law

• Both Fund and Minnite discuss, and debunk, the myth that 9/11 hijackers voted or were registered due to motor voter laws—a persistent political talking point, though unsupported by fact.
• Quote:

  "This idea that the 9/11 hijackers were registered to vote came in part because some of them had used fake driver's licenses... So they could be registered to vote. They are registered to vote was said on a couple of television shows in particular." —Lorraine Minnite [24:46]

9. Motivations Behind Fraud Claims and the Kobach Commission

• Minnite suggests that efforts to “clean voter rolls” and commission investigations (like Kris Kobach’s) are political strategies to demobilize opposition voters under the guise of integrity.
• She foresees “ongoing chaos” and “loss of public confidence” as the likely impact of such commissions.
• Quote:

  "I mean, I think it's about trying to create ongoing chaos on election day ... create an environment in which the public actually is losing confidence, not gaining confidence." —Lorraine Minnite [26:11]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the Rarity of Voter Fraud:

  “Voting crimes are extremely rare…it doesn’t happen.” —Trey Petlin [04:14]

• On Investigating Hidden Crimes:

  “All crimes are meant to be concealed, right? … We have that challenge with all kinds of crimes and fraud and detecting them, and we have methods for doing that.” —Lorraine Minnite [14:20]

• On the Logic of Suppression:

  “We perpetuate the idea that there’s all this corruption and that justifies stricter rules about access. And those stricter rules have disproportionate effects on people who are poor.” —Lorraine Minnite [17:04]

• On Cost-Benefit of Fraudulent Voting:

  “To commit voter fraud…to say, 'I'm going to break a law…possibly face even a felony conviction…to cast one more vote?' What do you get for it?” —Lorraine Minnite [19:59]

• Confrontation Over 9/11 Hijacker Claim:

  “Now, that's a pretty explosive claim. It's also not true.” —David Remnick [08:54]
  “You accused me of reporting a falsehood…my source was someone inside the Justice Department…It was wrong. Certainly the number was wrong.” —John Fund [09:13, 09:37]

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Notable Timestamps

• 00:19–01:14: Remnick sets up the episode, low voter turnout, and the new focus on “the wrong kind of people voting”
• 01:38–04:57: The Gatke case and the rarity of voter fraud, as told by Trey Petlin
• 05:38–13:40: Interview with John Fund—arguments for stricter laws, skepticism of data, the 9/11 claim, voter roll integrity, federal vs state oversight, and the philosophical conflict of fraud versus suppression
• 14:20–27:01: Lorraine Minnite and Jelani Cobb discuss the lack of evidence for fraud, roots of the myth, historic context, rationality, suppression strategies, and consequences of the Kobach Commission

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Summary

This episode provides an in-depth, nuanced exploration of voter fraud in America, dissecting real cases, political rhetoric, and empirical research. The dialogue reveals that concrete instances of voter fraud are vanishingly rare, despite prominent accusations and legislative campaigns to counter them. Supporters of strict ID and registration requirements argue that undetectable fraud is still possible and dangerous; critics view these efforts as politically motivated suppression of marginalized voters, invoking historical echoes of exclusion. The conversation exposes partisan divides, challenges myths, and raises important questions about the true threats to American democracy: mythologized fraud or calculated voter suppression.

Transcript

[David Remnick]

Floor 38. These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent.

[Lorraine Minnite]

I think it'd be interesting to really.

[David Remnick]

Try to unravel what his ties.

[Lorraine Minnite]

There's this sort of country city divide.

[John Fund]

Their own convenient ends, and it's not.

[Lorraine Minnite]

Clear where it goes next.

[David Remnick]

From one World Trade center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC studios and the New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. For generations, the truth of American democracy has been that we seem not to like it very much. We don't act on it. Ask your fellow Americans to get out and vote and it's a very tough sell. Even in a presidential election where we vote at much lower rates than most Western democracies, voter turnout in a country that prides itself as being one of the first democracies in the world is embarrassing and has been so for a long time. This isn't some new form of modern American cynicism. But in recent years, some in the political world have diagnosed a new problem. Too many people voting. Or maybe better put the wrong kind of people. The White House is standing by President.

[John Fund]

Donald Trump's unsubstantiated claim that millions of.

[Trey Petlin]

People voted illegally in the November election.

[David Remnick]

Donald Trump is not the first person to claim that voter fraud is a serious problem. Kris Kobach, who now serves as Vice chair of Trump's Advisory Commission on Election integrity, claimed in 2010 that in his home state of Kansas, as many as 2,000 people cast ballots using the names of dead voters.

[John Fund]

When I was sworn in as Secretary of State in Kansas In January of 2011, my primary objective was to set about drafting the strongest anti voter fraud law possible in any state and to get it enacted and implemented as quickly as possible. And we succeeded in doing that.

[David Remnick]

Kobach went to work filing charges. As of now, there are 12 alleged cases of voter fraud. 12. Two of the first cases he filed were against Stephen and Betty Gatke.

[Trey Petlin]

My guess is that if Betty's had a speeding ticket, it was many, many years ago.

[David Remnick]

That's Betty Gatke's lawyer, Trey Petlin. He practices in Olathe, Johnson County.

[Trey Petlin]

K defend people mostly in Kansas and Missouri in criminal cases. And I also handle personal injury cases.

[David Remnick]

And this was definitely Petland's first case of voter fraud. Betty and Steve Gatke are both retired from the postal Service.

[Trey Petlin]

Betty is a proud Native American Indian, a registered Republican. She's very civic minded. And then Steve is retired military.

[David Remnick]

In late 2015, an officer arrived at their house asking about the 2010 election, and then he had them arrested.

[Trey Petlin]

And the moment he read them their Miranda rights, I can tell you they were concerned. Originally, it was a charge that they had used an absentee ballot to double vote in Kansas. When they had also voted in the election in Arkansas, they had to sink back. But in 2010, they were in the process of moving. Betty had already moved to Arkansas. Steve still lived in Kansas, traveling to Arkansas quite a bit during this voting period. Ultimately, Betty never voted in Kansas. That was a mistake. She was innocent. Her case was dismissed. Steve voted by absentee ballot in Kansas, and he thought he could vote in Arkansas because he moved to Arkansas and he wasn't voting for any of the same candidates.

[David Remnick]

Voting crimes are often felonies. But Steve eventually pleaded guilty to a Class C misdemeanor, the lowest misdemeanor charge in Kansas.

[Trey Petlin]

Naturally, Steve and Betty were both embarrassed and disgruntled. You know, these are people that believe in the system and believe in the government. So they were disillusioned a little bit. And it was a difficult experience, I think, for both of them. And one of the things that I, you know, in my research of all of this, as I was defending Betty, it was clear that voting crimes are extremely rare. Not only had I not had one I hadn't heard of, I've done criminal defense for 23 years. It's not charged. And the reason it's not charged is because it doesn't happen.

[David Remnick]

That was Trey Petlin, a Kansas lawyer who defended one woman accused of voter fraud. Of the cases filed in Kansas, it appears that not one involves an undocumented immigrant. And maybe ironically, most of the accused were registered Republicans. But the issue has become a major talking point for conservatives. And one of the prominent voices on this is John Fund. Fund is a columnist for the National Review and editor of the American Spectator, and he previously wrote for the Wall Street Journal. He's the author of two books about threats to our voting system. Do you think voter impersonation is a problem of any scale?

[John Fund]

I think in close elections, where people know it's going to be close and decisive, I think their temptation, given how difficult it is to catch and detect the temptation in certain close elections, is overwhelming and presents a real danger in some elections where people get desperate and will use any methods. And by the way, voter fraud happens in both political parties. I can take you to counties in Kentucky where Republican voter fraud is rampant. And by the way, it's not $10 a vote. It's not $20 a vote. It's a bottle of bourbon.

[David Remnick]

So one study from Justin Levitt at Loyola, at Loyola Law School on voting across the country between 2000 and 20 in 2014, 14 years, found exactly 31 instances of impersonation fraud out of a billion votes cast. Is that not a meaningful study?

[John Fund]

No, because it's almost impossible to detect. You know, if you go to the securities and Exchange Commission and you ask them, how many cases of insider trading violations do you have? They will tell you, we know there's a lot of them, but we know it's almost impossible to detect unless we have an informant or somebody squeals. So you could go and ask people how many insider trading convictions the SEC has conducted the last few years. And it's a small number.

[David Remnick]

No, a very small number.

[John Fund]

Go to the sec.

[David Remnick]

Studies researchers at Wisconsin and Stanford have noted that the number of reported incidents of voter impersonation is about equal to the number of reported incidents of alien abduction. So what's going on? Do you think that these political scientists and the many, many others who have studied this issue are deliberately misrepresenting the facts?

[John Fund]

No. What I'm saying is proving it, showing it, is very difficult because once you put the ballot in the box, it's anonymous. So the only way to stop voter impersonation is to stop it from happening in the first place. Do we know how much there is? No, because it's almost impossible to detect and catch.

[David Remnick]

I want to ask you about the National Voter Registration act, what people usually call the motor voter law. George H.W. bush, the senior Bush, refused to sign it, but it went into law during the Clinton administration, and Republicans have been fighting about it ever since. What, in your view, is the problem.

[John Fund]

With the law enforcement?

[David Remnick]

Yes.

[John Fund]

Well, of course we want people to be able to register to vote easily. We even give them postcards to do it. The postcards are standardized. That's fine, but we gave the state the responsibility to keep their voter rolls clean. And the federal government had the responsibility to sue the states if they didn't keep their voter rolls clean. So this is part of the law. That means, of course, it should be easy to register to vote. But if people don't vote or they're voting illegally over an extended period of time, or their names are no longer valid, we have to cull the rolls. There has been no enforcement of that since 2008.

[David Remnick]

John, at what point you claim that thanks to the motor voter law, eight of the nine, 11 hijackers were registered to vote? This is you talking about that on Morning Joe some years ago, eight of.

[John Fund]

The 911 hijackers, eight of the 19 hijackers are registered to vote because they've gotten driver's licenses.

[David Remnick]

Really?

[Trey Petlin]

Wow.

[David Remnick]

Now, that's a pretty explosive claim. It's also not true. But it gets to one of the arguments you've made about the motor voter law, that linking the voter registration process to the process of getting a license could lead to abuse. Do you think that it's too bad, David? Do you think that it's too easy to register to vote in this country?

[John Fund]

You accused me of reporting a falsehood. I would simply tell you some of them. It was not eight. It was a lower number.

[David Remnick]

What was the number?

[John Fund]

You're asking me to report something that was 15 years old.

[David Remnick]

But what's the number? If it's a lower number than eight, what is the number?

[John Fund]

Well, give me time to research it then, because you're asking me a question out of the blue after 15 years. How much do you remember of what you reported 15 years ago?

[David Remnick]

Quite a lot.

[John Fund]

Well, you have a better memory than I do. My source was someone inside the Justice Department, a top official. Obviously it was on background, and I can't give you that person's name, but it was wrong. Certainly the number was wrong. Yes. It was not that high.

[David Remnick]

Were any of them?

[John Fund]

Yes, you can. We know several of them have driver's licenses. We know that they were driving.

[David Remnick]

One reason election officials are cautious about trying to clean up the registration polls is because of the real risk of mistakenly purging rightfully registered voters right here in New York. Our City Board of Elections just admitted it accidentally purged more than 100,000 voters from the rolls last year. Are you worried about that, too?

[John Fund]

Well, that is why over a third of my book involves cases of bureaucratic incompetence. I actually believe we need to spend more money and more resources and take more care with our elections. We need to have more sophisticated voting machines rather than the tinker toy things that we buy. And we need to have better voter rolls. And we need to also train a whole new generation of pol. The average generation of poll workers we have now working the polls is 70 years old. They're not going to be with us.

[David Remnick]

Forever, I guess, John, what I want to know is do you think that there's a really concerted effort afoot of real voter fraud? I'm not saying that there aren't isolated incidents. We can agree on that. And we know that the numbers of it are quite small, to the point of insignificance, the way I see it. But do you really think that there's a concerted effort to vote illegally in this country? And that's significant, and that is something that should be a consuming national issue as opposed to voter suppression. On the other side of the coin.

[John Fund]

I think we, as Chris Dodd, the senator from Connecticut, who was the co sponsor of the Help America Vote act, the last bipartisan legislation in this, he said we can do both things at the same time. We can make it easy to vote and we can make it hard to cheat. I agree with Chris Dodd. What I. What I want to emphasize here is there's common ground, but there are people here who don't want us to reach common ground. Some on the right and some on the left. Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Andy Young had a civil rights conference two and a half years ago in Austin, Texas. They proposed the Freedom Card. They said we shouldn't be spending all of this money on lawsuits and who has a voter ID and who doesn't. Let's create a Freedom Card. Let's convert the Social Security card into an ID card for voting purposes only, with a photograph on it. The cost would be minimal. And let's issue that to everyone who doesn't have an id, because as Andy Young told me, if people don't have an ID in this country, I don't know how many there are, but if anyone who does, they can't participate in the mainstream of American life. They can't travel, they can't get government benefits, they can't cash a check. Let's get them an id. And I have proposed this to many of the civil rights groups that are fighting these laws. Let's not fight about whether there should be a law. Let's get everyone an id. I've had very little interest in this. They apparently want to spend their money on litigation and lawsuits.

[David Remnick]

John, do you think that the federal government should be at the center of this? Would that be a good way to standardize?

[John Fund]

No, because the Constitution argues against that. The Constitution specifically lodges responsibility for the time, manner and place of elections with the states.

[David Remnick]

A big reason supporters of Trump's commission say that we need to focus on looking into this problem is because nobody knows exactly how many votes are cast fraudulently. It's true that it's very difficult to account for every single ballot every single year. That's absolutely true.

[John Fund]

But isn't it? So let's have preventatives, but it isn't.

[David Remnick]

Saying nobody knows how much fraud there is, just a way to sow doubt in the system and justify putting up barriers to vote, which also happens. Is it possible to know anything about this?

[John Fund]

We don't know how much tax evasion there is in this country, but we try to have a good faith effort to try to put up enough risks for people that no one will commit tax evasion lightly. We don't catch nearly as many people as practice tax evasion, but at least they know there's some consequences for some people.

[David Remnick]

Do you think this issue is as important as what we've experienced in 2016?

[John Fund]

The issue of hacking I am as concerned about the Russian hacking of our elections or the attempted hacking as I am of the mass unmasking of people caught up in NSA surveillance dragnets by Samantha Power and other officials in the Obama administration. I think both are of concern and we both should look at them.

[David Remnick]

John Funn, thank you very much.

[John Fund]

Thank you.

[David Remnick]

John Fund is author of Stealing Elections and co author of who's How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put your Vote at Risk.

[Lorraine Minnite]

The argument that, well, voter fraud is meant to be concealed, therefore you can't find it, is sort of ridiculous. I mean, all crimes are meant to be concealed, right?

[Jelani Cobb]

So money laundering is meant to be concealed.

[Lorraine Minnite]

Yes. Right. You know, or any kind of fraud is meant to be concealed. So we have that challenge with all kinds of crimes and fraud and detecting them, and we have methods for doing that.

[David Remnick]

Lorraine Maneeti is a professor of political science who spent years researching claims of fraud in our electoral system. Her conclusions are apparent right from the title of her 2010 book, the Myth of Voter Fraud. She spoke with New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb.

[Jelani Cobb]

So, Lorraine, what did you find when you started looking into claims of voter fraud?

[Lorraine Minnite]

Well, I should say it was a really difficult research project because there isn't a singular kind of a database that tracks cases of voter fraud. So I had to go through a process of looking for it where I thought it would show up. So I would start with asking secretaries of state and attorneys generals in the state. And I sent a survey to every district attorney in the United States. I asked them, you know, how many cases do you have of XYZ registration fraud, of double voting, of voter impersonations? I did interviews with election officials and I just kept looking and looking and looking and couldn't find it. I couldn't find it. And I will say since 2010, when my book was published, I have served as an expert witness in eight federal voting rights cases and a state case. So there have been nine cases that have been dealing with, say, Challenges to voter ID laws. You can read the legislative record in the states when they debate the voter ID laws that have been passed. You can look at the court records on these cases. No one, no state has been able to show that they've had any kind of a problem with voter fraud. So it's not just me looking for it and maybe making mistakes somehow and not finding it. I mean, I have looked for years and I have looked in multiple ways and I have tried to reason through where would it show up if it were happening. And look there. And no one else has come up.

[Jelani Cobb]

With it, but you take a pretty significant stand on it. I mean, the title of the book is the Myth of Voter Fraud.

[Lorraine Minnite]

Right, right.

[Jelani Cobb]

And so if this is a kind of mythology, then what exactly are we talking about here?

[Lorraine Minnite]

Well, I think it's tapping into attitudes that are really deep in American culture and racially charged and class based attitudes that certain people shouldn't be allowed to vote. And so we perpetuate the idea that there's all this corruption and that justifies stricter rules about access. And those stricter rules have disproportionate effects on people who are poor.

[Jelani Cobb]

So as we talk, there is the kind of swirling issue of the presidential voter fraud initiative and Chris Kobach attempting to get voter data from the various states. And if voter fraud is not common or rare in American politics, why does it have the kind of political appeal that it does?

[Lorraine Minnite]

Well, I think there's a kind of institutional bias in our party system. We have this party system with two parties. We don't have proportional representation. We have winner take all. So the logic of that is that you just have to get one more vote than your opponent. That creates incentives to think about demobilizing your opponents voters. So this is targeting a particular population, you might call it the more marginal population in the United States because it has a partisan overlay. Those people are perceived to be more friendlier to the Democratic Party. And so you have the Republican, Republican Party almost everywhere these laws have been adopted in the United States, pushing for voter ID laws, proof of citizenship laws, because there's an electoral advantage to them if they can keep down the vote of the opponents rather than try to enlarge their majority around their own policy agenda. So it's got a very partisan overlay.

[Jelani Cobb]

Well, I think it's interesting that there's this long history that we can look at with African Americans, particularly around poll taxes and grandfather clauses and literacy tests and outright physical intimidation to prevent people from voting. But we've also Seen that language applied increasingly to Latinos, particularly around the idea of people who are undocumented, who are participating in the electoral system. And one of the things I think I found interesting in your book was you talking about the idea of voter fraud being fundamentally more irrational an act than voting itself is. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.

[Lorraine Minnite]

Sure, yeah. It's in the sort of professional study of politics by political scientists, scholars, analysts sort of apply the idea of costs and benefits to voting and they sort of count up the benefits and then they look at the cost. And the cost would be in time or effort or education, you have resources and so forth. And they sort of come to a conclusion that actually it's not that rational for any individual to vote, especially say in a national election, because the likelihood of your one vote determining the outcome is so small that you would say, well, why bother? Right? And so the question of committing voter fraud says, well, let's take an almost irrational act, which is voting, and then to say, and you know what I'm then going to do is I'm going to break a law, I'm going to possibly face even a felony conviction. If I am a non citizen or certainly an undocumented noncitizen, I'm going to face deportation to cast one more vote. What do you get for it? What do you actually get for your voting?

[Jelani Cobb]

So let me say the opposite, the other side of this. In 2012, when Mitt Romney was questioned about why he thought he lost, he made the indelicately phrased statement about Obama having given massive financial gifts to minorities. Isn't that part of the equation when people talk about this, about what the person would benefit would be, there's some guy in a seedy part of town with an envelope full of cash and he's just kind of distributing it around to get people to show up to vote?

[Lorraine Minnite]

Well, there are cases of that. I mean, there are cases of something called vote buying. And in particular in some poor isolated communities, there have been examples even not that long ago of exactly what you just described, which the problem with that is that with the secret ballot, it's not a very efficient way of trying to rig an election because anybody could take the money and go in and vote any way you want. So how do you guarantee that you're getting what you're paying for? So that's another example of why this is sort of boneheaded thing to do.

[Jelani Cobb]

I do want to think about this historically though, for a minute. You started this work in 2000. But there have been scandals and questions around voter integrity in the United States for a long time. And we could look at Tammany hall or Huey Long, that kind of incandescently colorful figure of Louisiana politics as well.

[Lorraine Minnite]

No, in the past we certainly have a colorful history of electoral manipulation, of election fraud, broadly of, you know, stealing of ballots and so forth. But that's not where we're at today. Many things have changed since the 19th century and even since, you know, the 1920s and the 1930s, or even going.

[Jelani Cobb]

Back to the colonial era where, you know, candidates would, for the colonial legislatures would kind of literally go to the saloons and, you know, get everyone beer and then roll them over to the ballot.

[Lorraine Minnite]

Yes, this is very entertaining and interesting history, but even those stories we can tell about Tammany hall or about even Lyndon Johnson's. Everybody likes to talk about Lyndon Johnson's first rate, first Senate, when mysteriously the voters of Alice, Texas, kind of lined up in alphabetical order to sign in.

[Jelani Cobb]

That is a testament to great local party organizations.

[Lorraine Minnite]

That's right.

[Jelani Cobb]

One of the points that you raise in your book that I found really interesting was about this Myth that the eight, I think, of the 19 hijackers on September 11th were registered voters. Or this said something which I hadn't heard before I read your book. But as I was reading this, I thought, of course someone has said this. Why would someone not make up this idea? But this was an idea that was going around and it became kind of a stand in for people's fears about having, I guess, a voting system that was too lax.

[Lorraine Minnite]

Yes. Yeah. And that was partly, we can trace it right, to the motor voter law. Right. Which mandates that state agencies that do motor vehicles provide an opportunity for people to register to vote. This was a signature feature of that 1993 piece of legislation. It was one of the first bills that Bill Clinton signed. These are the first or the second. So the sort of conservative right wing people who went after Clinton his whole time in office were pretty obsessed with the National Voter Registration act and the idea that it would allow for fraudulent registrations, illegal registrations, mistakes, problems. They're going pollute the registration rolls. So this idea that the 911 hijackers were registered to vote came in part because some of them had used fake driver's licenses, or I think in some cases there were some who had actually legally obtained driver's licenses. So the question was, hey, if they got a driver's license, they had to have been asked, would you like to register to vote? So they could be registered to vote. They are registered to vote was said on a couple of television shows in particular.

[Jelani Cobb]

And this turns out to not be TR Right. What do you think we'll see from this commission that's being led by Kris Kobach?

[Lorraine Minnite]

Well, I think we'll see more of what certainly I've seen and other people who study this issue have seen happen, which is to mash up a lot of data as a pretext to arguing that the voter rolls are so polluted and corrupted and people could be lurking around using false IDs to come in and or false names, you know, to get on the rolls and then register. And so I mean, I think it's about trying to create ongoing chaos on election day in a way, you know, in other words, create an environment in which the public actually is losing confidence, not gaining confidence. I don't think the public is going to gain confidence from whatever comes out of that commission.

[Jelani Cobb]

So the book is the Myth of Voter Fraud by Lorraine Maneeti. And thank you. It's a very pertinent topic. Thank you for coming to talk with us today.

[David Remnick]

Lorraine Maniti, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. She spoke with Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Bottin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfiel, Maitha Lee Rao and Stephen Valentino, with help from Emily Mann and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Churina Endowment Fund.