Stolen Election Hysteria-A Little Historical Reality, Please!

Sure, we know that the idea of a vast conspiracy of individual illegal voters stealing our democracy is delusional. But just how delusional?
Well, by one simple metric the answer is 100%. The type of voter fraud that Republicans are alleging is known as "voter impersonation"-someone shows up to vote pretending to be someone else. That sort of voter fraud is virtually non-existent. I say "virtually," since it's really not possible to be 100% sure, but suffice it to say that when Mickey Mouse gets registered to vote, he never shows up to cast a ballot.

But we can look at this through another lens: How much voter suppression can alter an election, and how often does that happen? This is a fair question, since voter suppression is inevitable, if not always intentional, outcome of the "voter fraud" fraud. And here the answer turns out to be quite remarkable.

One perspective was provided this week when ACORN released a report "Adding Insult to Injury: Foreclosure Victims in Danger of Poll Challenges" (PDF), which showed the following potential impacts from a threatened-but later denied (only in Michigan) potential GOP tactic: using foreclosure lists to challenge voters at the polls:

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9384

an actual person showing up and not being allowed to.