New President Donald Trump got the news media and the Democrats all in another tizzy by announcing his plan to have the Department of Justice look into voter fraud in the past election, even though he has presented no real evidence of such an occurrence.

His claim of upwards of five million illegally-cast votes, which he also said would give him the victory in the popular vote as well as the Electoral College if his claims are substantiated, were allegedly cast by voters who weren’t registered to vote, along with voters that have been dead, “many for a long time,” according to one of the President’s tweets.

Of course, the opposition party is up in arms, as expected, warning the American public that the investigation will somehow take away certain segments of the population’s right to vote, and will cause undue hardships on minority voters, although just how that will happen is unclear.  That is just the standard response whenever Republicans try to challenge or change anything about the voting process.

Most experts view the investigation as a witch hunt, with few revelations to come out of it, but once again, Trump has managed to give his opposition a free shot by pursuing this effort.  Everyone knows there are voting irregularities, some are probably the result of fraud, some because of confusing polling and counting methods, and some due just to human or machine error.  A lack of a standard voting process from state-to-state just adds to the opportunity for confusion and errors in reporting.

Whether or not there is enough to make any difference in a national election seems unlikely, but in local races where the vote counts are much smaller, these types of errors could change the outcome of the election.  How often that may happen is unknown as well.

But, there is no harm in taking a look, unless the DOJ spends several millions of dollars looking for something that is insignificant.  Look at the recent recount of the presidential totals in Wisconsin, for example.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein requested a recount of the votes, and sure enough, the final tally found that Trump actually increased his lead over Hillary Clinton by 131 votes, once all the numbers were in.  The problem is the final cost of the recount, which, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, was a staggering $2,005,603.09.  Luckily for the Green Party coffers, the actual cost came in under the original $3,499.689 the state had estimated, that the Party had to put up to complete the recount.

This is where the Democrats might just get a break.  Suppose the DOJ spends millions of dollars and finds out that there were voting irregularities all over the country, but the aggregate total was only changed by a few hundred votes?  Those dollars will come out of the taxpayers’ pockets.

Is that not a campaign sound bite just handed to you on a silver platter?  First, the President is portrayed as making a wild, shoot-from-the-hip accusation, that was proven to be as ridiculous as it’s accuser, but the President just spent millions of taxpayer dollars trying to prove his wild accusation was true, without any hard evidence to begin the process.

The election process is not perfect, and there are proven instances of voter fraud, but the consensus is that it is not wide spread, at least not enough to change the outcome of the presidential race.

Those taxpayer dollars would be much better spent in looking for ways to improve the process, including making sure every citizen has the right and the opportunity to vote, but also to vote only one time, and to stop voting after they pass away.

There are laws on the books that allow for the enforcement and prosecution of those who commit voter fraud, they just need to be enforced.

Ironically, the Democrats, who could quite possibly gain from Trump’s folly, are the same ones that have failed to enforce voter fraud laws, and have argued against more secure voter identification in the past.

Strange how things work out in the political world, is it not?