If ever there was a time to reveal how Indiana elections could be rigged, it was in April 2008. That’s when the U.S. Supreme Court was weighing whether Indiana lawmakers could require voters to show government-issued identification at the polls. The state’s Republican-controlled legislature had passed a stringent voter ID law in 2005 based on the argument that it was necessary to prevent voter fraud. The law was challenged in court. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the Supreme Court’s majority in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, said the state’s “interest in counting only the votes of eligible voters” justified voter ID. Thus, the law was ruled constitutional. But in doing so, Stevens also included in his opinion a statement that continues even today to strike at the core of ongoing — and often partisan — debates over the prevalence of voter fraud. He said there was scant evidence that anyone in Indiana had ever illegally voted in person.
“The only kind of voter fraud that (Indiana’s voter ID law) addresses is in-person voter impersonation at polling places,” Stevens wrote. “The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history.”
Indiana has seemingly exhausted the topic of voter fraud. Republicans passed a law that they said would stop it. Democrats argued that it never existed to begin with. Yet fears of nefarious election activities have been stoked again, by a presidential candidate warning of a “rigged” election and by Indiana’s secretary of state raising the specter of “voter fraud.”
The latest speculation raises questions about what constitutes voter fraud, whether there is new evidence of it in Indiana and whether the state’s elections are at risk of being taken over by partisan forces.
Full Article: The truth behind voter fraud in Indiana.