Instilling Confidence in American Voters Is Reason Enough to Pass Voter Integrity Laws
A new poll shows fewer than half of Americans are confident their votes are counted. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Only 45 percent of Americans are “very confident” their votes were accurately counted in the last few elections, according to a new poll by RMG Research, Inc. on behalf of FAIR Elections Fund. This lack of confidence owes largely to murky voting laws and worst practices that sow doubt among voters. Basic election integrity laws can fix this problem and restore confidence in voters and pride in their country in the full knowledge that the American people govern their nation.
The poll asked respondents: “Thinking about the last few elections, how confident are you that the votes were accurately counted and the proper winners have been declared?” Only 31 percent said they are “somewhat confident," 13 percent said they are “not very confident," eight percent are “not at all confident,” and four percent are unsure.
These findings are not new. Before the 2016 election—long before the mainstream media started repressing how unconfident the public is about elections—36 percent said they believed voter fraud would be a problem that election, more than those who said it wouldn’t be an issue. This didn’t only owe to Republicans then-candidate Donald Trump’s warnings about possible fraud, because Independents were more likely to question the validity of elections than Republicans.
The RMG Research poll lays bare an unfortunate lack of confidence among Americans who did vote in the last few elections. Democrats, who tout their support for democracy and want universal suffrage, should be concerned about the untold millions of Americans who likely didn’t vote the last few elections because they were afraid their votes wouldn’t count.
These voters’ concerns are not entirely unjustified. An MIT professor found that 1.4 million, or roughly four percent, of mail-in votes were not counted in the 2016 election.
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Democrats Argue Against Confidence in Voting
Democrats claim that election integrity laws are harmful or redundant. At their worst, extremists on the Left claim they serve to disenfranchise voters, and that Republicans only support them to reimplement Jim Crow-era measures like poll taxes and knowledge tests. At best, moderates complain laws like citizenship and voter ID requirements are unnecessary because it’s already illegal for non-citizens and ineligible citizens to vote. Democrats frequently point to the low level of voter fraud convictions as proof.
But voter fraud convictions are extremely difficult to obtain, and even one illegal vote is a vote taken away from a law-abiding citizen. However, even if the public believes the argument by Democrats—that voter fraud is exceedingly rare—the low confidence voters have in their government and its ability or willingness to accurately count votes speaks volumes to the need for additional election integrity legislation. Indeed, the poll results indicate the public believes nothing of the sort.
The RMG Research poll provides a basic roadmap to restore voter confidence. It asks the same citizens who expressed a lack of confidence in elections the types of election integrity laws they would support.
- Ninety-one percent favor requiring states to regularly clean voter rolls by removing people who have died, moved, or are non-citizens.
- Eighty-eight percent favor making sure the number of ballots cast match the number of votes reported.
- Eighty-seven percent support requiring voters to show a photo ID before casting a ballot.
- Eighty-six percent favor requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.
- Finally, a whopping 85 percent favor requiring all mail-in ballots be received by Election Day.
Strengthening election integrity should not be controversial. Requiring voters to prove their citizenship when they register and provide photo ID when they vote does not place an undue burden on the voter. In addition to actual fraud—no matter how miniscule—it would nearly eliminate possible fraud.
In the 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform, former Democrat President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker cited photo ID as a deterrent to voter fraud and said, “The electoral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters.”
The confidence Americans would gain if state legislatures implemented the bare minimum election integrity measures that over 80 percent of voters support would instill greater trust in American society. High trust societies tend to have higher rates of civic participation. If Democrats really want as many legitimate voters as possible to vote each election, they should support these measures to instill confidence in Americans citizens and give them a reason to vote.
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