Michael A. Chihak: Vote fraud, the monster under the bed

Remember the childhood fright that there was a monster hiding under the bed?

Although filled with fear, as children we dared to look, and although seeing nothing, some of us could not believe our own eyes and remained afraid there was a monster under the bed.

Reaching adulthood meant leaving that myth behind, but it’s back in an insidious, grown-up way, inducing fear meant to stifle some people’s right to vote. Arizona politicians see a monstrous amount of voter fraud in elections, blaming undocumented immigrants. The truth refutes that, but many continue fomenting fear of a fraud monster.

At her Feb. 13 appearance in Phoenix, the Secretary of Homeland Security echoed the myth about Arizona voter fraud cases: “I’m sure there’s many of them. We talked about several of them this morning at a roundtable that we had.”

She fell — shall we say? — monstrously short of the truth and the facts.

In Arizona’s 2020 election, which the ego-driven president continues falsely claiming was stolen from him by fraud, 3.4 million votes were cast; just three of those votes led to criminal fraud convictions, the pro-president Heritage Foundation reported. That’s hardly a let’s-steal-the-election conspiracy.

No undocumented people were accused of voting, belying Republicans’ harping that Democrats let immigrants in to vote for them. About 274,000 undocumented immigrants were in Arizona in 2020, the American Immigration Council estimated. No votes by them were found.

Additionally, Republicans’ infamous recount of Maricopa County ballots revealed no fraud by immigrants or anyone else in 2020 and ended — surprise! — giving more votes to Joe Biden than the official results.

Fraud likely has occurred among the millions of votes cast before and since 2020, but in numbers so small they were inconsequential to election outcomes. That’s because Arizona carefully maintains registration rolls, regularly tests voting machines and, most importantly, requires bipartisan ballot counting.

Why then do Republicans continue fostering the idea that undocumented immigrants vote? To boost their case for tougher state laws on voter registration, identification and other strictures.

Knowing fraud is minimal or mythical, Republicans seek to frighten people as justification for disenfranchising voters who lean Democratic, those more likely than Republicans to be people of color or to lack proof of citizenship for registering to vote.

Investigations have uncovered no meaningful fraud in registration or voting, despite what the lie-prone president and Arizona Republicans say. The secretary of state has refused, rightfully, to give voter registration records to federal officials, to protect our privacy and with knowledge that the records are maintained properly.

Of 49.5 million registrations reviewed from other states, a minuscule 0.02% were found to be of noncitizens, The New York Times reported in January, quoting the Homeland Security and Justice departments.

“While the findings affirm that noncitizens do sometimes wind up on the voter rolls, the small numbers so far puncture the claims ... that elections are riddled with illegal votes cast by undocumented immigrants,” the Times reported.

New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, which studies voting rights, similarly concluded: “All available evidence, including from the administration itself, indicates that only American citizens vote, and the exceptions are vanishingly rare.”

Good to know. Equally good to know is that any legislation that monster-fearing Republicans pass to banish mythical fraud will need Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ signature. She has the facts and is likely to make facile use of her veto.

Disingenuous Republican legislators will continue claiming fraud as they look under the bed and, although seeing no monster, tell us one exists. That’s the real fraud.