We Don't Need Special Police To Fix A Nonexistent Problem

 In their haste to fix elections to favor their own party's candidates, Republicans in state legislatures are creating special election police. They claim it is to combat election fraud -- a problem that is extremely rare in U.S. elections. The truth is they are trying to suppress the vote by scaring legitimate voters into not voting.

Here is part of what Zeeshan Aleem says about this at MSNBC.com:

One of the most obvious issues is that these programs require state governments to invest money, personnel and institutional resources to address a phantom problem. Texas’ voter fraud crackdown efforts last year required spending more than $2 million, and 20,000 hours of labor to close three cases and open seven new ones. Those kinds of resources would be much better spent on a problem that actually exists or threatens our democracy.

There is also rising concern among voting rights advocates that increasing attention to aggressive enforcement could dampen voter participation. Will the exceedingly rare instances of fraud, which are committed accidentally a significant amount of the time, be punished with much more severe penalties? For example, if voters are confused about where exactly they’re registered to vote or allowed to register to vote because they moved recently or they’re between addresses, a fear of enhanced penalties could convince some that voting is not worth the effort. There's reason to think that these problems are disproportionately likely to discourage voters who have fewer resources and hail from marginalized communities, because they tend to have less information as voters and can't afford risking financial penalties.

There are also questions about the exact purview and power of these new units. “I really think we have a lot of procedures in place where these things can be addressed, and I worry that we’re putting in place a police force which has no guardrails,” Florida state Sen. Lori Berman, a Democrat, told The Associated Press about the new election police unit in her state. “We don’t know who can initiate the investigation, there’s nothing to prevent it from being used for targeting certain groups, and I really worry about us having this kind of squad that’s totally out there without any supervision.”

Finally, it’s worrying to contemplate how these policies will allow the Republican political class to continue to mislead its voter base into thinking voter fraud is indeed a real problem. Some Republican voters might hear of these policies and think to themselves, “Surely if they’re creating entire new police units for this thing, it’s got to be pretty serious, right?” Unfortunately, some of them likely underestimate the cynicism of the leaders of their own party.

The money spent on new election police and associated programs is better spent on funding to administer elections properly — and solving problems that actually exist.