Heritage Foundation fellow: There are lots of examples of voter fraud... uh... somewhere

In an interview with Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown this morning, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Brian Darling argued for the importance of Florida-style voter suppression laws in order to stop potential voter fraud. But when pressed by Todd to identify any actual examples of voter fraud, Darling appeared stumped:

TODD: Where is this voter fraud? I mean it is not this giant…
DARLING: We’ve had recent examples.

DARLING: Yeah, but it’s very hard to catch voter fraud. Look at what James O’Keefe did. He walked into DC, he didn’t have any ID. One of his guy video…
TODD: Did he vote?
DARLING: No, he didn’t vote.

Stricter voter ID laws would do nothing to stop candidates like McCotter from submitting invalid ballot petitions. Nor would they stop cases like the ACORN example, in which a few individuals plead guilty to submitting bogus voter registration forms in hopes of getting paid more for voter registration. In both instances, the existing laws proved more than sufficient to address the problems.

It is very hard to catch voter fraud because it is exceptionally rare. In fact, studies have shown individuals are more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit it. People generally don’t commit voter fraud because they realize that it is immoral, because it is illegal and they fear being punished, and because it is an extremely inefficient way of affecting an election.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/06/04/494395/heritage-foundation-expert-cannot-cite-any-examples-of-actual-voter-fraud/