> To be very clear, this is not about voter fraud. The risks of ineligible people voting, or people voting twice, have been repeatedly shown to be virtually nonexistent, and "solutions" to this problem are largely voter-suppression measures.

I don't think these are particularly bold things to claim are happening.

> Besides, it's common knowledge that votes have been cast for dead people in places like Chicago and Philadelphia for decades. So I don't understand how you can say that election fraud isn't happening with a straight face.

Not true. It is true that people have casted absentee/early ballots and then died. It's also true that people with the same name as someone who has died has voted. When these examples come up they typically fall into those categories.

Individual voter fraud (where an individual votes more than once, or as another person, etc) is pretty rare or at least very rarely convicted. I am confident saying that because there is a lot of political and media incentive to go find those cases yet the number of actual convictions for individuals committing voter fraud every election is very small compared to the voting population. This year I've only see two in the news despite it being a hot topic:

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/10/2... * http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/illinois/alton-election-j...

State governments have again and again set up task forces to try and root out this kind of fraud and come up with only a handful of cases. For example in 2008 Wisconsin had a voter id task force investigation looking specifically for voter fraud and came up with a total of 20 individuals. ( https://badgerherald.com/news/2011/02/01/doj-task-force-char... ). The voting population of WI that year was over 2,900,000. So even if WI only caught say 1 of 100 fraudsters that's only 2000 fraudulent votes. It's not _nothing_ and those people should absolutely be prosecuted but quite unlikely to swing the vote. A big effort to get lots of voters to do this would increase the number of co-conspirators and likely increase their chances of being caught. So overall at least what they've found is a very small effect, yet they still came back later and enacted strict Voter ID. Why?

Voter ID, one of the most popular recent forms of law to combat this type of fraud, has a demonstrable effect at depressing voter turnout overall by as much as 2% ( http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/measurin... ) in some cases. There are some conflicting studies as is normal in science but that seems to be the growing consensus and I think it follows basic logic that it does suppress votes the question is just how much and for whom. Added barriers to vote are bound to stop some eligible voters from coming to the polls. Even rain depresses turnout and ID requirements are a bigger barrier IMO.

When I first started to dig in a little more on this topic recently I was startled by the numbers of US Citizens who do not have any kind of government Photo ID and reading more started to sympathize with how difficult it could be to get the ID in the first place if you are impoverished, elderly, or just don't have your birth certificate for whatever reason. For example in Texas during the trial which struck down their recent very strict voter id law the court found that about "608,470 registered Texas voters lack the ID necessary to vote" ( https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/separating-fact-fiction-v... ). And something that should surprise no-one it's correlated highly with poverty which is also correlated highly with being in certain ethnic minorities so the effect is likely to be more pronounced there.

So IMO you take all of that and the back of napkin math says that even if that 2% depressed turnout is highballing it and it's more like .5% we're looking at a theoretical 14,500 less eligible votes in WI in 2008 with an added Voter ID law vs. my inflated estimate for 2000 in person voter fraud (when they found only 20). If our goal is to maximize eligible voter turnout which one is more damaging to the right to vote? Voter ID good intentions or not has a much worse effect. So essentially my assertion is that Voter ID is the medicine which hurts the patient more than helping presuming our goal is to maximize the number of legitimate votes in each election.

All that and we've not even touched on other much more direct voter suppression efforts like this year how with some VRA restrictions out of the way many states dramatically cut back on polling places and early voting both of which have had adverse effects on minority populations https://www.thenation.com/article/there-are-868-fewer-places... . Voters in NC were lined up for four hours to vote in some democratic leaning areas like Charlotte that lost polling places and no doubt some people will give up and walk in that situation. To top it all off there are many examples of Republicans alluding to or directly stating that Voter ID, enhanced Voter Registration checks, reduced polling places, reduced early voting, etc will help their odds of winning ( http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/us/some-republicans-acknow... ). What a shame, to have powerful players in a major political party that seem to not believe in democracy at all.

ps. The Brennan Center for Justice keeps a running roundup of notable studies on the topic and several delve way more into the suppression of minority votes issue vs suppression of democratic votes. It's a good resource and while they do certainly have a viewpoint on the matter present them in a balanced manner in my opinion.

https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/research-and-publicat...