Lately, the news has been full of references to "fraud." As a retired trial attorney, from time to time, I had to deal with clients who had been defrauded. I can say from experience that claiming fraudulent behavior or representations is easy and emotionally charged but actually proving fraud in court is one of the most difficult claims to prove in both civil and criminal litigation.
Since my main trial experience was in Arizona, I will use Arizona law as an example. Here is one statement of the elements of a fraud claim that must be proved in court.
While the criteria required to establish fraud vary in state and federal laws, one must generally be able to prove that an important fact was misrepresented by a person who knew the information was false to a victim who suffered a loss or injury as a result of reasonable reliance on the misrepresented fact. The misrepresented fact must be substantial and must have played a critical role in the victim’s decision. In order to be considered fraud, the misrepresented information must be a fact, not an opinion. See Arizona Fraud Laws.
In most states, the elements of a fraud claim have to be proven individually in order for the incident to be considered a fraud. With regard to elections, here is a link to a Federal Election Fraud Fact Sheet prepared by the United States Attorneys Office of the District of New Hampshire. If you have any questions about the Federal Law of Fraud, I suggest you carefully read the list of Conduct Actionable as Federal Election Fraud, Intimidation, or Suppression listed on the Fact Sheet.
Once again it is easy to claim fraud but it is another thing to prove fraud in court. Why is this the case? The main issue is obtaining facts that support the claim. Now you would think that researching the total number of election fraud cases that ended in a conviction would be fairly easy. Court records are public and easily reviewed. In fact, there are huge searchable databases such as West Law that provide attorneys with almost every case of record in the history of the United States.
If you spend a few minutes looking online, you will find real credible sources that address the issue of voter fraud in the United States, not unsupported allegations by politically motivated individuals. For example, here is a link to an article entitled, "Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth" from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University of Law. Here is one quote from the article:
The Brennan Center’s seminal report on this issue, The Truth About Voter Fraud, found that most reported incidents of voter fraud are actually traceable to other sources, such as clerical errors or bad data matching practices. The report reviewed elections that had been meticulously studied for voter fraud, and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. Given this tiny incident rate for voter impersonation fraud, it is more likely, the report noted, that an American“will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”
The rest of the article cites 18 additional studies about the incidence of voter fraud. Of course, if you want to listen to politically motivated individuals rant about voter fraud all the studies and court decisions in the country will not convince you that there is really no significant issue or problem.
Again, it is easy to claim fraud, it is very, very, difficult to find cases of voter fraud in the United States.
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