According to the Brookings Institution, “There is no evidence that mail ballots increase electoral fraud.” USA Today purports to “fact check” the “False claim that mail-in voting is connected to bad actors, fraudulent ballots.” The Brennan Center for Justice informs us, “Extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare.”
While it’s important not to make claims about the existence of voter fraud you can’t prove, what’s also true is that nearly all of the analyses dismissing concerns about voter fraud and mail-in ballots rest on a logical fallacy: The absence of evidence is evidence of absence. In other words, the assumption is that voter fraud is not happening because there are very few criminal convictions related to voter fraud. Republicans, however, have long contended that those governing the areas where voter fraud is most likely to occur — Democrat-run cities with a high density of votes — have no incentive to root out and prosecute voter fraud because they benefit from it politically.
With that in mind, what just happened in the Democratic primary in Bridgeport, Connecticut is pretty incredible, and so far, a cursory search shows there’s not a single story from a national news outlet about it. Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim just won the Democratic primary, effectively securing his seventh term as mayor of the largest city in Connecticut. However, his Democratic opponent — John Gomes, a city employee fired by Ganim earlier this year — isn’t conceding. He claims Ganim stole the election by tampering with mail-in
