How many known cases of in-person voter fraud could have been prevented by Voter ID Laws?

Question

Liberals often claim that while there may be other forms of voter fraud in the United States, like voter registration fraud, the only kind of voter fraud that a voter ID law can possibly prevent is in-person voter fraud (where someone shows up at a polling station and votes when they're not legally permitted), and that there have been almost no documented cases of someone committing intentional in-person voter fraud in the United States.

How many confirmed cases have there been in the United States of intentional in-person voter fraud which could have been prevented if the state in question had passed voter ID laws?

And whatever that number is, has it ever been big enough to significantly alter vote totals? What if you throw in unintentional cases as well?

Answer 1

TL;DR

• Cases of confirmed fraud (prosecuted or not): 10 (0.4%)
• Cases of confirmed fraud or non-citizen voting (which would be caught by checking drivers licenses): 52 (2.5%)
• Total confirmed illegal votes by non-felons (which puts an upper bound on our data): 239 (11.6%)

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~~~~ How many known cases? ~~~~

This article appears to be the most in-depth investigation of the topic.

A News21 analysis of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases since 2000 [until 2010] shows that ... in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tough voter ID laws, is virtually non-existent.

In an exhaustive public records search, News21 reporters sent thousands of requests to elections officers in all 50 states, asking for every case of fraudulent activity including registration fraud, absentee ballot fraud, vote buying, false election counts, campaign fraud, casting an ineligible vote, voting twice, voter impersonation fraud and intimidation.

Their conclusion was that very few cases of fraud were of the type that could be prevented by voter ID laws. Most cases involved absentee ballot or registration fraud (where your ID would not be checked). Those that involved in-person fraud were usually of the "able to vote twice" or "am I eligible in the first place" variety, which is also not resolved by proving that you are who you're supposed to be.

Their database only has 10 cases of in-person voter impersonation fraud, which is the only kind that a loose voter ID law would catch (i.e. any proof of ID). A stricter form which required a type of ID which only proven citizens could get (such as a driver's license) would have eliminated 52 more cases of (probably) unintentional fraud. Taken together, these account for 2.5% of all reported cases over a ten year period.

There's also their 187 cases of generic "Casting Ineligible Vote" by Voters, which includes some felon voting (not caught by voter ID), some non-citizen voting (which is included above), but mostly there isn't information on what type it was. If you assume this extra set is entirely the kind of illegal voting that would be caught by voter ID, and that there's no overlap with the above set, that raises the total to a maximum of 239 cases of illegal voting (11.6%).

~~~~ So what is the impact? ~~~~

Under this worst-case scenario, where all of the 239 cases reported come from separate instances of detectable voter fraud, it's still not enough to have any significant impact on the majority of elections. These cases were spread throughout much of the country, over a twelve year spread. But even if they were all concentrated in one district, in one year, they still wouldn't be enough to have an impact on any national-scale election. For example, the smallest districts (on average) have around 500,000 people. Even assuming that only 125,000 (1/4th) of those are actually registered voters, and there's only 10% turnout, that's still 12,500 votes cast. A 51-49% split would have the winner win by 250 votes, which is more than the 239 known cases of fraud.

To put it another way, there were 351,971,792 votes cast (total) in the presidential elections in the years in question (2000, 2004, 2008) (2012 was too late to be included in the database). 239 votes represents 0.0001% of that total.

~~~~ References & Notes ~~~~

I will point out that I only looked at national-scale elections: Representatives, Senators, and the President. It's possible that local elections (for mayor or other city/county positions) were decided by a small enough margin that a few people voting fraudulently (deliberately or not) would have swung the result. However, I'm not going to look into the data that closely, and the smaller the vote, the harder it will be to vote too often.

Finally, I'd like to also reference this answer, which points out that in order to have even 1000 deliberately fraudulent votes:

[E]ither one person has to travel to and vote at a 1000 booths to supply a 1000 votes, or a 1000 people have to collude to vote above and beyond any normal legal incentives to vote. Which is why Tammany Hall corruption was quite visible.

_{Note: The database is as comprehensive as possible, but is not 100% complete. See here for details, but basically not all government officials responded. However, if the government didn't respond, any fraud they may have had cannot be considered "confirmed".}

You can query their data directly here, as well as images of every document they sent or received as they were building it.

Answer 2

From http://www.wral.com/state-elections-officials-seek-tighter-security/13533579/:

(this is just one state, with nearly 1000 likely voter fraud issues; at least 81 of which - "dead souls" - 100% certainly would have been prevented with voter ID laws; and if the voter ID has residency requirements, would ALSO prevent the other 765).

I am not even going into ~200 thousand who COULD have committed voting fraud if they were inclined to do so; again preventable by Voter ID laws.

Strach said North Carolina's check found 765 registered North Carolina voters who appear to match registered voters in other states on their first names, last names, dates of birth and the final four digits of their Social Security numbers. Those voters appear to have voted in North Carolina in 2012 and also voted in another state in 2012.

... The crosscheck also found 35,570 voters in North Carolina who voted in 2012 whose first names, last names and dates of birth match those of voters who voted in other states in 2012, but whose Social Security numbers were not matched. ... "A lot of states don't provide last four SSN, or they don't have that information," Strach explained.

Additionally, the analysis found 155,692 registered North Carolina voters whose first and last names, dates of birth and final four Social Security number digits match voters registered in other states but who most recently registered or voted elsewhere. That last group, Strach said, was most likely voters who moved out of state without notifying their local boards of elections. "Those may be voters we need to remove because they've left North Carolina."

Strach also said a "10-year death audit" found 13,416 deceased voters who had not been removed from voter rolls as of October 2013. Eighty-one of those individuals, she said, died before an election in which they are recorded as having voted.

Answer 3

Very few cases of voter fraud, of the kind preventable by voter ID laws, have ever been identified. Texas' recent voter ID law would have only prevented four cases of fraud. Nationally, an analysis of alleged cases of voter fraud found only ten instances of fraud since 2000 that voter ID laws would have prevented. The Department of Justice found that 40 people had been indicted for voter fraud in federal elections between 2002 and 2005. In these cases, there is a certain (albeit very small) amount of voter fraud, but only a small fraction of that fraud could be prevented by voter ID laws.

Answer 4

Here is at least one person who voted improperly in all major elections for four decades:

According to the Times, Hernandez cast improper votes in "every major election" since 1976. That's at least 10 of them, twice as many if it includes midterms.

Noncitizens, including legal resident aliens, are forbidden to vote in every state. States that have sought to incorporate verification of citizenship into the voter-registration process have encountered obstacles from the Obama administration and denunciations from the New York Times.

It is pretty hard to know how many of these cases have occurred given the fact that there is no "master list" of U.S. citizens (which I regard as a good thing, actually). However, given lax proof requirements at registration, and even laxer requirements of identity proof at the time of voting, the results of every local/regional election in areas highly populated by non-citizens is in doubt.

At least Kansas' Voter ID Law requires that

Persons registering to vote for the first time in Kansas must prove U.S. citizenship when registering to vote.

Thus, there is at least one voter ID proposal that would have prevented ineligible persons from registering in the first place.