Election Assistance Committee

In 2006 the EAC commissioned two reports, required by HAVA, using outside consultants.  One combined research and reporting on voter fraud and voter intimidation; the second report was designed to research the impact of voter identification on turnout and make recommendations for best practices relating to ID.

The research submitted by the consultants came to a number of conclusions, among them:

• There is no appreciable evidence of polling place fraud or voter impersonation;
• Structural barriers and voter intimidation play a significant role in elections; and
• Voter ID laws have a negative impact on turnout and disproportionately impact certain minority voters.

These conclusions undercut the principle rationale for imposing strict voter identification requirements, proof of citizenship requirements and voter registration restrictions, and confirm arguments voter ID opponents have been making for years.

The voter fraud/voter identification study was performed by Tova Wang, from the Century Foundation, and Job Serebrov, a conservative attorney in Arkansas.  They submitted their report in mid-July, 2006, but the EAC took no action.  Recently, emails have confirmed that Hans von Spakovsky, currently an appointee to the Federal Election commission and then a political official at the Department of Justice, exerted pressure on the commission to suppress these studies because of the conclusions they reached undercut his advocacy for restricting access to the polls in the name of preventing polling place fraud.

In mid-October, amidst questions from advocacy groups and a demand from Barbara R. Arnwine, Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee, and a member of the EAC Advisory Committee, for the EAC to release the report, the USA Today published a story relying on the leaked interim report.

The combination of the article and the upcoming mid-term elections, where voter fraud was being used to push strict voter ID laws, led to increased demands on the EAC to release the report.  The EAC refused to release anything regarding the report until December 7, 2006.  Instead of releasing the report prepared by the consultants, they released a report authored, without input from the consultants, by the EAC Counsel, Juliet Thompson-Hodgkins.  The report did not acknowledge the conclusions of the draft submitted by the consultants, mischaracterized evidence they collected, and played down the impact structural disenfranchisement and continued voter intimidation have on the electorate.

Again, outside groups demanded the EAC release the original report.  During the January EAC Board of Advisors meeting, Ms. Arnwine proposed a resolution, which failed, demanding the release of the original report.

The consultants are eager to talk about the report, but are prevented by a gag order in their consultancy contract.  Despite repeated requests to be released from the gag order, the EAC continues to refuse to allow the consultants to speak.  On April 26, 2007, Tova Wang released a statement saying the EAC rebuffed her repeated requests to be released from the gag order. Subsequent attempts to allow the consultants to speak about their research and conclusions have been rebuffed by the EAC.

The draft report on voter ID by the Eagleton Institute of Politics and the Moritz College of Law was finally released after calls from Representative Maurice Hinchey and Representative Jose Serrano.  The Eagleton and Moritz consultants were able to speak more candidly because their contract did not contain a gag order. According to testimony delivered to the EAC, the ID report found that identification requirements have a negative impact on voter turnout and a disproportionate disenfranchising impact on certain minority voters.  Like the fraud/intimidation report, the EAC refused to endorse the findings of the ID report claiming methodological flaws.  According to the consultants, however, “the statistical analysis suggests that stricter voter ID requirements can be associated with lower turnout...Without a better understanding of the incidence of vote fraud and its relationship to voter ID, for now best practice for the states may be to limit requirements for voter identification to the minimum needed to prevent duplicate registration and ensure eligibility.”

During the time the EAC refused to release the reports Congress was debating a number of proposals to impose voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements on voters across the country.  The rhetorical foundation propelling one of these proposals to passage on the House floor, and in many states, was the prevalence of voter fraud.