“Fraud!” cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered “Fraud!” But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed. They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain, And they knew that Casey wouldn’t let that ball go by again.

Empassioned sports fans don’t like a bad call, and we all know its much easier for us to spot a bad call when it goes against our team, and it’s not just the maddened thousands who root for the Mudville 9. Every election there are calls of voter fraud (usually on the Republican side), and these are often met with charges of racism (by the Democratic party), especially if there are calls for Voter ID.

“[I]f you go back to the year 2000, when we had an obvious disaster and – and saw that our voting process needed refinement, and we did that in the America Votes Act and made sure that we could iron out those kinks, now you have the Republicans, who want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally – and very transparently – block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote Democratic candidates than Republican candidates. And it’s nothing short of that blatant,” DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL) told TVOne’s “Washington Week.”

Yet America has had a long history of cheating in favored sports, including in politics.  We have the Chicago Black Sox throwing the world series in 1919, and more recently we have A-Rod, Lance Armstrong and many more cheating via performance enhancing drugs.  It’s long been alleged that dead people voting in Chicago and Texas cost Nixon the 1960 election, and while that’s debatable, its certain that electoral fraud with the big-city bosses has occurred.  A major voting fraud was investigated in 1982 in Chicago; 63 people were convicted of federal election crimes.  More recently (and much smaller scale) we had an Obama supporter convicted of election fraud down in Cincinnati.  North Carolina officials found data suggesting the 35,000 voters in 2012 may have voted in multiple states, and the Project Veritas videos captured Democratic operatives willing to help voters to vote in multiple states, and they just showed another expose here in 2016:

The same thing is playing out this election cycle, with dead people registering to vote in Virginia.  And this isn’t just small scale; Mary Landrieu may have stolen the Senate seat by voter fraud over Woody Jenkins in 1996:

Jenkins has uncovered evidence that an organized effort to buy votes involved a network of drivers, large amounts of cash, and experienced supervisors. Jenkins has audio tapes of interviews with persons who admit to having voted multiple times for Mary Landrieu and with drivers who admit to facilitating this fraud.  The tape recordings, which have been provided to Senate investigators, contain shocking admissions. “I voted 10, 15 times.” “I was the driver of the van, picking up the people to go down there to vote at least 10 times or more.” “I made about $700 that day, starting at about 6 that morning to about 6:30 that evening.” “I voted about 10, 15 times . . . They kept letting me go back and vote.”

Al Franken may have won his 2008 Senate seat via voter fraud and Ellen Sauerbrey may have lost the 1994 Maryland governor’s election due to voter fraud.  I remember watching both the Landrieu and Sauerbrey elections, where large majorities of the vote totals across the state supported the Republican candidate, then late in the evening massive votes came out of New Orleans and Baltimore to seal the narrow come-from-behind victory.  There is no doubt voter fraud occurring, as some of the convictions above show; the question is does it cost elections?  Conservatives believe we’ve had our elections stolen many times by the liberal big-city machines, but perhaps we’re just seeing what we want to believe.

But let’s do an economic thought experiment.  Begin by assuming that Democrats and Republicans are equally honest with respect to elections.  Now, where are the concentrations of Democratic power? That would be the cities.  Where do Republicans rule?  Pretty much every where else.  If you are a Democratic operative, and you’re willing to risk it, you can steal large numbers of votes.  If you are a Republican hack, you can only steal a few votes, because your vote theft in rural areas covers far fewer people.  It would take far more Republican hacks to add up to what a few Democratic stealers could do.  So its all about incentives.  Just based on voter demographics, incentives highly favor Democratic vote theft, while discouraging Republican vote theft.  Even if they have the same underlying morality, you should expect to see relatively more Democratic voter fraud.    The 2nd Law of Economics is, Incentives Matter.  They matter in every facet of life, to include our politics.

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright, The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;  And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout, But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.