In an interview with Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown this morning, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Brian Darling argued for the importance of Florida-style voter suppression laws in order to stop potential voter fraud. But when pressed by Todd to identify any actual examples of voter fraud, Darling appeared stumped:

DARLING: And there’ve been examples of voter fraud… in Florida. Look at ACORN.

TODD: Where is this voter fraud? I mean it is not this giant…

DARLING: We’ve had recent examples.

TODD: We’re talking about one or two people here, one or two people… and we’re not even a hundred percent sure.

DARLING: We just had a Michigan Congressman [Republican Thaddeus McCotter] resign… not run for re-election because he gathered signatures… his campaign gathered signatures that couldn’t be validated.

TODD: Yeah, but that’s a case of petition signatures being valid. I mean that’s a different law here.

DARLING: Yeah, but it’s very hard to catch voter fraud. Look at what James O’Keefe did. He walked into DC, he didn’t have any ID. One of his guy video…

TODD: Did he vote?

DARLING: No, he didn’t vote.

TODD: See?

DARLING: He didn’t vote. But he asked for a ballot and they were gonna give it to him.

TODD: Right, but you’re actually proving the point here. That the fraud didn’t take place because they prevented it.

DARLING: But it’s very hard to catch the fraud. That’s why you have to do it before Election Day. If you try to do it on Election Day, you’ll never catch any of the fraud.

[...] The one example of the sort of fraud these strict voter ID laws allegedly aim to stop that Darling could site was conservative filmmaker and convicted law-breaker James O’Keefe. O’Keefe’s approach was to break a law intentionally to prove how easy it is to break a law and to then claim that the law is insufficient because he could break it. This strategy is similar to going into a convenience store, pretending to shoplift a candy bar, and citing that as evidence that the store needs to do a background check of every customer before they come into the store. And, as Darling concedes, even O’Keefe didn’t actually vote.

Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice did a good job at pushing back at Darling's assertions during the interview. You can read their report on the impact of these voting law changes and how they might impact the upcoming election here: Voting Law Changes in 2012.