Voter Fraud?

The New York Times has an excellent article on the fraud that is Republican claims about voter fraud. Apparently the Justice Department of the Bush administration has made this a top priority over the past five years. Considerably more resources have been put into investigating voter fraud than has been the case, and the requirements for bringing indictments and trying cases have been lowered. The result has been that almost nothing has been found. The number of cases tried has been few and the conviction rate has been poor. Nearly all cases are people making honest mistakes and no evidence of any conspiracies to change election results. In short, even with a considerable increase in the effort to find a problem, no problem has been found. The simple fact is that people voting improperly has no effect on our electoral system. The efforts by Republicans to suppress the vote has a powerful impact on our elections, but voter fraud has no influence at all.