Moses Maimonides, the 12th Century scholar wrote that it was better to acquit a thousand guilty people than to kill one innocent one.
Sir William Blackstone, in 1760 wrote about English law that “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
Benjamin Franklin in 1785 wrote “that it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer.”
The US Supreme Court in 1895 wrote that “it is better to let the crime of a guilty person go unpunished than to condemn the innocent.”
These are the principles behind the “presumption of innocence”, a foundational value of our system of government.
The current HHS policy on vaccines is that the vaccination decisions should be left to the individual, or the parent of an underage person, primarily because there may be adverse events that occur with vaccination. Although reduced vaccination may result in increased amounts of outbreaks in the general population and may result in serious harm or even death to others, the position of the current administration is that the risks to the general population do not override the potential risks to the individual who chooses to be or not be vaccinated. This approach seems to contend that individual liberty is at least as important, if not more so, than community liberty.
I disagree with that position. Decades of research in this country and around the world have shown that although there may be an extremely minute risk of adverse events from vaccination, that those risks are literally magnitudes less than the risks of hospitalization and death from the spread of those diseases. I certainly do not want my children or grandchildren exposed to diseases that have been virtually eliminated from the environment because another individual has decided that they are afraid of a reaction to the vaccine in their children. This is particularly upsetting when those fears are unsupported by research, such as the fear of autism from viral vaccinations.
That brings me to the issue of Election Fraud.
The current administration believes that if there is potential for election fraud, it is obligatory to create a regulatory environment to combat these potential fraudulent actions. In other words, we need to vaccinate the system against the risk of illegal voting. Hence the move to force Voter ID, proof of citizenship, paper ballots, decreased ability to cast mail-in ballots, etc.
As above, the question I ask is, “Is the cure worse than the disease?”
I must answer, “Yes”. And why?
The Heritage Foundation, not a font of liberal thought, has analyzed over one billion voting records in Federal elections since 1982. They found over that entire 42-year period:
- 34 cases of “Impersonation Fraud at the Polls” with 28 convictions
- 387 cases of “Fraudulent use of Absentee Ballots” with 289 convictions
- 382 cases of “Ineligible Voting” with 340 convictions.
- 8 cases of “Altering the Vote Count” with 8 convictions.
- 1 case of “Alien False Registration” with 1 conviction.
- 99 cases of “Alien Ineligible Voting” with 71 convictions.
And adding all of these categories plus several others together they found a total of:
1,620 total cases of any type of mistake or error, with 1,382 convictions.
1,382 convictions.
TOTAL.
Over 42 years and
Over 1 billion votes cast.
An error rate of less than 0.00000014%
https://electionfraud.heritage.org/search
To apply a “cure” for this “ailment” we are being asked to institute laws and regulations designed to reduce the number of improper voting to less than 1,382 cases per billion votes cast (33 cases per year!)
In 42 years, there were only 28 convictions for “Impersonation Fraud” at the polls
- (less than 1 per year).
- In 42 years, there were only 289 convictions for “Fraudulent use of Absentee Ballots”
(less than 7 per year). - In 42 years, there were only 71 cases of “Alien Ineligible Voting”
(less than 2 per year).
Creating barriers designed to filter out these 10 cases per year, across the entire country could include:
- Restricting registration to those people who can “prove” citizenship
- Restricting registration to those people who can “prove” residence in that state
- Restricting voters at the polls to those people who can “prove” citizenship at the time they vote
- Requiring ALL citizens to have either a valid passport or a valid birth certificate in their possession in order to vote
- Prohibiting universal mail-in ballot voting.
Instituting those rules is not neutral. They have connected problems which have been well argued over the past years including:
- Differences in names on driver licenses and birth certificates, e.g. for married women or adopted children.
- Difficulty in proving residency, e.g. because 9% of any state’s population has moved into the state in the past 12 months and many will not update their driver licenses until the previous one expires.
- Difficulty in obtaining a “real” Birth Certificate, e.g. for Barrack Obama.
- Costs of obtaining a passport, e.g. for the least able to afford this “poll tax”, or for months-long delays in processing requests.
- Elimination of universal mail-in voting which is current policy in 8 states and DC.
- Reduction in locations in which a passport application can be obtained and submitted, e.g. in the recent regulatory elimination of non-profit libraries (in PA 85% of all libraries are non-profit).
Increased regulations would certainly result in less citizens being able to or choosing to vote. Tens of millions of Americans do not have a driver’s license, a passport, or their birth certificate. Additional tens of millions of Americans have driver’s licenses that do not show their current address or have the same name as their birth certificates.
What is the number of citizens that would no longer be able to register, reregister, or otherwise find it too difficult to vote that would become a bridge too far in the fight to prevent the 10 cases of potential fraudulent voting that occurs in Federal elections in the entire country each year? 20 million? 1 million? 100,000? 10,000? 1,000?
If we enact laws that result in millions of people not voting because they don’t have the motivation to reregister or obtain the necessary new documentation in order to attempt to prevent 10 people from voting illegitimately, have we advanced the cause of democracy?
The Voter ID law may make common sense, but its effects may be far more harmful than the problem it is trying to address.