Voter Fraud: A Threat to Democracy, or a Myth?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2017

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Donald Trump memorably claimed, without a shred of evidence, that millions of votes cast by undocumented immigrants had given Hillary Clinton the popular vote in the 2016 election. More circumspect conservatives argue that voter fraud is a real problem requiring more stringent checks on voting—which their opponents see as thinly disguised voter suppression. Here, three views on voter fraud: a Kansas lawyer who defended a woman charged with fraud; the columnist John Fund, who argues that voter fraud may exist widely, whether we see it or not; and Lorraine Minnite, a political-science professor who researched the topic exhaustively, and who tells the staff writer Jelani Cobb that purposeful fraud in the electoral system essentially does not exist.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent.
0:09.8	I think it'd be interesting to really try to unravel what his ties.
0:13.7	There's this sort of country-city divide for their inconvenient, and it's not clear where it goes next.
0:19.8	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC
0:25.6	Studios and The New Yorker.
0:30.4	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:33.6	For generations, the truth of American democracy has been that we seem not to like it very much.
0:39.1	We don't act on it.
0:40.9	Ask your fellow Americans to get out and vote, and it's a very tough sell, even in a presidential election,
0:46.5	where we vote at much lower rates than most Western democracies.
0:50.2	Voter turnout in a country that prides itself as being one of the first democracies in the world is embarrassing.
0:56.8	And has been so for a long time.
0:59.2	This isn't some new form of modern American cynicism.
1:02.6	But in recent years, some of the political world have diagnosed a new problem.
1:07.1	Too many people voting.
1:08.8	Or maybe better put, the wrong kind of people.
1:11.6	The White House is standing by President Donald Trump's unsubstantiated claim that millions
1:16.6	of people voted illegally in the November election.
1:19.6	Donald Trump is not the first person to claim that voter fraud is a serious problem.
1:22.6	Chris Kobach, who now serves as vice chair of Trump's advisory commission on election integrity,
1:29.7	claimed in 2010 that in his home state of Kansas, as many as 2,000 people, cast ballots
1:35.7	using the names of dead voters.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.