The Real Voter ID Fraud

"Maybe someday, the Republicans howling about voter fraud will come clean and acknowledge what is really going on: It’s a Republican fraud – one designed to discourage Democratic voters from exercising the franchise," The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel argued in an editorial last week.

The newspaper argues that there's no serious evidence of widespread voter fraud, and that Republicans have pushed to fight a problem that doesn't really exist.

Although it seems easy enough for voters to bring photo ID to the polls, the Journal-Sentinel says it's not so simple, especially in poorer communities where fewer people have such identification. 

"If challenged, a voter should be able to prove where he or she lives," the editorial says. "But a standard issue ID isn’t necessary for that."

More to the point, the paper argues, fraudulent voting just isn't a problem.

"The AP says that searches by Republicans in Colorado and Florida have found less than one-tenth of 1 percent of all registered voters in either state were illegal."

While Colorado's secretary of state claims “real vulnerabilities in the system":

[H]is earlier estimates of 11,805 noncitizens on the rolls have shrunk to 141. Of those 141, only 35 have ever voted. And according to the Denver clerk and recorder’s office, which did its own checks, the number might be even smaller than that.

"That’s some crisis," the Journal-Sentinel says. "The rest of us shouldn’t let the party get away with this deception."