Voter fraud in Ohio not 'a systemic problem'

In today's Cleveland Plain Dealer, Robert Higgs reports that instances of alleged voter fraud in Ohio during the 2012 elections typically were the result of confusion. The article begins:

Despite concerns by some Ohio lawmakers about voter fraud, most of the voting irregularities that elections officials reported during the 2012 general election did not result in criminal charges, the Northeast Ohio Media Group has found.

 

Prosecutors in counties large and small told the media outlet their investigations typically concluded that the irregularities resulted from confusion by voters or mistakes by elections officials rather than from people trying to game the system.

 

And while Republican lawmakers have introduced bills aimed at curbing voter fraud, some Republican prosecutors joined their Democratic counterparts in reporting no evidence of a widespread problem.

 

“Basically I found that there wasn't an overwhelming pattern of voter fraud,” said Butler County Prosecutor Michael T. Gmoser, a Republican in a Republican-dominated county. “There’s a couple of isolated incidents of people making bone-headed decisions.”