July 10, 2024 9:54AM # Election Policy Roundup By [Walter Olson](https://www.cato.org/people/walter-olson) --- SHARE Listen to this article Generated with [ ElevenLabs](https://elevenlabs.io/) AI technology. Loading the [Elevenlabs Text to Speech](https://elevenlabs.io/text-to-speech) AudioNative Player... Here’s a roundup of election law and policy items I wish there were time to do as single posts: - Confirming the intuitive: when people are lied to about elections supposedly having been stolen, they become more willing to countenance political violence. \[[James A. Piazza, *American Politics Research 2024*](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1532673X241263083)\] Those who falsely portray elections as stolen bear a heavy moral responsibility. - Count on the Illinois legislature to pull a stunt like changing the rules to yank the rug out from under adversaries who’d already committed to a ballot access method \[*Chicago Sun-Times* [editorial](https://chicago.suntimes.com/editorials/2024/05/28/illinois-election-law-november-ballot-primary-republicans-democrats-lawsuit-pritzker-editorial), [Derek Muller](https://electionlawblog.org/?p=143211) and [more](https://electionlawblog.org/?p=143468); a judge disallowed applying the change to this year’s election\] - From 2021, another entry for the [null effect](https://www.cato.org/blog/suppression-or-no-most-voting-changes-dont-alter-partisan-outcomes) hypothesis I’ve [explored](https://www.cato.org/blog/more-scrutiny-alarmist-election-claims): “[We find no evidence](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2330443X.2021.1906806) that voting by mail increases the risk of voter fraud overall. Between 2016 and 2019, RBM (VBM) states reported similar fraud rates to non-RBM (non-VBM) states.” \[*Statistics and Public Policy*, 2021; RBM = many registered voters receive a ballot by mail, VBM = all of them do so\] - Last month I participated in two webinars on ranked-choice voting [for the Federalist Society](https://www.cato.org/multimedia/media-highlights-tv/walter-olson-participates-webinar-does-ranked-choice-voting-help-or) with Lisa L. Dixon and Martha Kropf, moderated by Maya Noronha, and [for Vote Nevada](https://www.cato.org/multimedia/media-highlights-tv/walter-olson-participates-panel-dispelling-misinformation-about) with Sondra Cosgrove and Doug Goodman with a discussion of Ballot Question 3 – I come on at 37:45. - A climate of intimidation is [changing America](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/19/us/politics/political-violence.html): “Former Gov. Roy Barnes of Georgia, a Democrat, said \[Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis\] had asked him to lead the prosecution of Mr. Trump for election interference in Georgia.” He declined: “I wasn’t going to live with bodyguards for the rest of my life.” ##### Related Tags [Criminal Justice](https://www.cato.org/criminal-justice), [Free Speech and Civil Liberties](https://www.cato.org/free-speech-civil-liberties), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).