Nation Profile
THOUGHT LEADERS
BROKEN ELECTIONS How prevalent is election fraud in the United States, and what can be done about it?
T
he Pew Research Center,” says John Fund, “estimates that between 15 and 20 percent of voter registrations right now are invalid, outdated, or inactive.” In a recent episode on “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek discussed America’s voter ID laws and the integrity of our elections with John Fund, co-author with Hans von Spakovsky of “Our Broken Elections: How the Left Changed the Way You Vote,” which examines the vulnerabilities of our election process and offers recommendations to fix those problems.
JAN JEKIELEK: I’ve been
JOHN FUND: Until about
a decade ago, this issue was discussed in a bipartisan way. Many newspapers in 52 I N S I G H T January 7 – 13, 2022
In 2016, a majority of people who voted for Hillary Clinton believed she won the election, either by interference from the Russians or by manipulation behind the scenes. That also undermined confidence in the elections. Then you had the Trump– Biden election, which was full of controversy. Now, my book isn’t about taking sides or determining the final outcome of the 2020 election. But it absolutely nails down documented problems in the 2020 election. MR . JEKIELEK: Let’s go
back to this issue in the Nov. 3 elections here in New York. MR . FUND: There were
John Fund, co-author of “Our Broken Elections: How the Left Changed the Way You Vote.”
BLAKE WU/THE EPOCH TIMES
enjoying your new book, “Our Broken Elections.” It seems there’s this ubiquitous narrative that voter fraud isn’t a thing. How does this all work?
America have won Pulitzer Prizes for uncovering voter fraud cases: the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer as recently as the early 2000s. In 2002, Congress came together, a Democratic Senate and a Republican House. This was after the Bush v. Gore fiasco in Florida, and they passed the first federal election law. That bill gave states and local governments money to improve their voting machines. It also toughened up requirements that states clean up their voter rolls. And then in 2008, the Supreme Court weighed in on a 6–3 decision on the constitutionality of voter ID laws. When Barack Obama came in, his Justice Department was adamantly opposed to these voter ID laws. One top Justice Department official actually told a group of Justice Department lawyers, “We’re not going to enforce it because it will reduce voter turnout. It won’t increase voter turnout.”
