In-Person Voter Fraud Is Virtually Nonexistent, Federal Judge Rules

Ryan J. Reilly, HuffPost
Updated: 04/30/2014 10:59 am EDT

WASHINGTON -- Trying to crack down on in-person voter fraud isn't a strong enough justification for Wisconsin's voter ID law, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, because voter impersonation virtually never occurs now and is unlikely to become a real problem in the future.

In striking down the 2011 law signed by Gov. Scott Walker (R), U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman held that although the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 2008 that states had an interest in preventing voter fraud, Wisconsin's voter ID law wasn't justified because voter fraud in person doesn't really exist.

"The evidence at trial established that virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin," Adelman ruled in Frank v. Walker. "The defendants could not point to a single instance of known voter impersonation occurring in Wisconsin at any time in the recent past."

The judge also held that re-enforcing public confidence in the electoral process wasn't a sufficient justification for the voter ID law. He noted that there was no evidence that law enforcement authorities were simply failing to catch instances of voter impersonation because they were hard to detect.

(More here.)