John Fund has "updated" his book on vote fraud, bringing out the new edition on the eve of this election just as the first version materialized immediately before the last.  He suggests that it be ordered through Amazon. Com, so that it is in hand earlier rather than later.   Hosted by super-blogger Glenn Reynolds and his wife Helen, Fund recently promoted the book with a restatement of his views.

     For Fund, the challenge has always been to improve on raw anecdote, and he values presenting himself as a reasonable man, Republican but, on this issue, pure of motive and fair-minded in his critique.  His hold on this position is unsteady; it easily slips away from him, and soon the partisan anecdotalist is back among us.  The Instapundit and Insta-wife have given him a forum; perhaps they would consider making time for the contrary point of view.  In the meantime, this, here, will have to do.

     Fund has entitled his book, Stealing Elections, and he means what he says, reinforcing the message in his subtitle: "How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy."  In his interview with the Reynoldses, his message is trimmed here and there, winding up in the same place.  He first emphasizes the "sloppiness" of elections, and he says that it is so extreme that it is difficult to say where the sloppiness ends and actual fraud begins.  It seems at one point that he is arguing that the incidence of fraud is unknowable but that, election administration being "sloppy," fraud is inevitable.  Later he tries out the proposition that incompetence, "having the same result" as fraud, is no different from cheating.  At another point, he seems more certain of the bad stuff: "people with bad motives have often a very easy time finagling the system…."

     "Often"?  If the line between sloppiness and criminal mischief is hard to make out in the darkness, on what basis would Fund insist on the frequency with which people possessed of "bad motives" in fact behave?  Fund adjusts once more.  Whatever the known incidence of fraud, the public is increasingly convinced of it.  Reynolds asks:  A problem in and of itself?  Yes, Fund replies:  just so.   Neither Fund nor the Reynoldses reflect, as might the listener, that Fund is claiming the authority of very public opinion he is striving with such passion and tenacity to mold to this view, suitable for his purposes.

     Fund disclaims any intention of portraying this as a "one-party problem."  It is, more broadly and without regard to partisan or ideological division, a "civil rights" issue, A master of innuendo, Fund then manages to hoist high the political flag.  Does he need an example of partisan self-interest in a cover-up of fraud?  The California "Democratic legislature" is useful for this purpose.  Fund denounces it for rejecting what he takes to be sound voter identification requirements:  he explains that "there are a lot of rocks they [Democratic legislators] don’t want to overturn."  Has one party clearly stolen an election in recent times?  Apparently, yes, in Washington State, where Fund believes that election fraud elected the Democratic Governor.  Does one party cry foul manipulatively, just for its own purposes?  "Al Gore’s lawyers" are implied to have done so in Florida, setting an example for the specious protests of recently defeated Mexican Presidential candidate Manuel Lopez Obrador. 

     And where would we look for the worst fraud?  In low income, minority communities, where even Democrats—even Democrats, the very beneficiaries of voting fraud in these locations—are said to concede the problem, and where people in need are surely more vulnerable to the temptation of selling their votes for cash.  But, Fund tells the Reynoldses, the Department of Justice is paralyzed into inaction by fear of being labeled "racist." 

     Fund naturally reserves time for a discussion of voter identification requirements, and he and his interviewers come to the comfortable agreement that there is no reasonable case to be made against them.  Here a good Republican like Fund finds compelling support in the practices and laws of other countries.  It turns out that Anthony Kennedy has just guessed wrong at when, on what issue, this sort of comparative analysis will meet with conservative favor.  It works here, on this issue:  we should follow the lead of other countries, any countries, that have done what Fund believes that we must do here.  Iraq is also honored on this score, having demonstrated the advantages of ink-staining voters’ fingers.  John Fund, Internationalist.  But he calls, too, on the authority of time-honored American common sense, which is thought to show itself on the issue in the analogy between voting and boarding airplanes, activities so alike that ID requirements ought also to be same for both.

     Fund is not wrong, of course, to condemn the sloppiness of the electoral system.  No one would disagree that we cannot countenance fraud.  Bringing just these statements to a mass audience, while adding little to public enlightenment, would do no harm; and perhaps some good would come from repetition, since after six years of debate, maladministration remains severe and public confidence has been further diminished. 

      But this is not Fund’s brief.  As he did in 2004, he brushes off his claims for a re-run immediately before each election, just in time to discourage voters and to prepare the table for any complaints of fraud that partisans—apparently his partisans, and not "Al Gore’s lawyers"—might make.  He is selective in his presentation of fact, drawn to anecdote over evidence, guided and thus limited by his partisanship, and loose in his argument.  Election reform politics, which is what John Fund practices, is not election reform but instead its antithesis.

      Glenn and Helen Reynolds can do better if they wish to present their listeners with an appreciation of the challenges of election reform.  Should they be interested in further pursuing the subject, suggestions are available. 

Bob Bauer