Voter ID Laws: Preventing Fraud Or Suppressing The Vote?

Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann holds a postcard to help identify voters in need of a free state government issued card that is issued through his office at no charge, in Jackson, Miss. (AP)

Will new voter identification laws prevent hundreds of thousands of people from casting ballots in the upcoming presidential election? Or will the new laws help stop voter fraud?

It’s a starkly red and blue issue. Republicans say the laws are needed to prevent voter fraud, and they have pushed the laws through 11 state legislatures over the past two years. Thirty-one states now require voters to show identification at the polls.

Democrats say the laws will disenfranchise elderly and minority voters, who tend to vote for Democratic candidates.

Texas Voter ID Law

This week President Obama’s Justice Department is fighting the state of Texas in a Washington DC district court over the 2011 Texas Voter ID law. Attorney General Eric Holder this week said the law could keep 1.4 million Texans from voting.

Texas is one of 16 states with a history of voter discrimination that must receive pre-clearance from the Department of Justice to change its voting system. DOJ denied the change, saying the law violates the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against minorities. Texas is now asking a three-judge panel to approve the change in a case that could end up in the Supreme Court.

Pennsylvania Voter ID Law

Pennsylvania also passed a new voter ID law. According to an Associated Press report, it could prevent up to 750,000 people, who don’t currently have government-issued identifications from voting.

Pennsylvania’s House majority leader, Republican Mike Turzai, in a speech to the state’s Republican committee, said they had passed the law so that Mitt Romney could win the state, seeming to bolster the argument that the laws are politically-motivated.

Florida’s Battle With The Justice Department

And Florida is locked in a battle with the Justice Department over purging voter rolls.

Florida compiled a list of 180,000 people on voter rolls that the state believed to be non-citizens, and were preparing to send that information out to county election supervisors so they could purge those people from the lists.

The Justice Department said they couldn’t purge voters close to an election day, and there were widespread concerns over the accuracy of the list.

A federal judge sided with Florida, saying that the state could go ahead with the voter purge, since it was trying to purge people who never belonged on the voter rolls in the first place, instead of trying to clear people, who might have moved out of the area or hadn’t voted in recent elections.

The purge is on hold for now, as Florida, and other states, like Colorado, are calling on the Department of Homeland Security to release its list of non-citizens. Florida says that information will help the state make its list of ineligible voters more accurate.

Regardless of the outcome of these individual cases, it’s a pitched battle between Democrats and Republicans.

“Voter ID laws have been with us for years, it will be with us for years to come,” said Doug Chapin of the University of Minnesota’s Program for Excellence in Election Administration.

Guest:

Doug Chapin, University of Minnesota’s Program for Excellence in Election Administration

We welcome comments from all of our listeners. Post below. Please stay on topic and be civil. Comments may be moderated by us, but you are solely responsible for the content of your comments.

IU Alum

Please advise Mr. Chapin that there is no such entity as the University of Indiana. There is Indiana University located in the State of Indiana and Indiana University of Pennsylvania, located in the State of Pennsylvania.
http://www.facebook.com/jimhfoster Jim Foster

I’m hoping the right wing will support my legislation establishing a militia to fight space aliens. There is just as much evidence of an impending attack by space aliens as there is of voter fraud.
http://www.fibrowitch.net Jan Dumas

Can we stop worrying about the 700,000 who need ideas and instead try to get the many million of people who never vote to the ballot box too? The ones with drivers licenses, and passports and three forms of photo id who have never felt the urge to step inside a voting booth.

Voter id cards are easy, just have the police or city hall issue photo ideas with a birth certificate. Make them cost ten dollars, or start a fund and I’ll donate to help people who can’t afford ten bucks to get an idea. But those millions of people who can’t be bothered to vote. How do we get THEM to vote.
radpin

At a basic level, I was always brought up to believe that driving a car is a privilege, as where voting is a right that is given to all citizens. The standards and requirements around an optional privilege (dealing with the DMV, etc) should never be extended to something as serious as a citizen’s right.

Politically I would imagine that most Republicans abhor the idea of requiring registration for owning a firearm, but for voting it’s completely acceptable.
Factesque

If the Republicans were sincerely interested in the integrity of the voting system, they would be doing everything in their power to prevent the disenfranchisement of legitimate voters. They are doing no such thing.
Guest

Evidence of fraud: Al Franken, close contest determined by fraudulent voting when more than 300 felons from largely Democrat districts voted for the Democrat…hmmm. Why is this ok??? This was a disenfranchizement of the majority of voters in this case
- Factesque
  
  Even if that fable about Franken were true, no disenfranchisement would have occurred. Nobody prevented Coleman voters from voting.
  As to the fable, there is no evidence that 300 felons illegally voted for Franken. It is simply a parcel of suppositions and half-truths. Look it up.I believe it is just as wrong to disenfranchise a voter as to allow an ineligible voter. When Republicans act like they believe that, I’ll start to take them seriously.
  - BrokenTusk
    
    Vote nullification is a form of disenfranchisement.
DIANE HAMBURG

THIS DISCUSSION ABOUT FRAUD IS A GOOD START, BUT HOW ABOUT TALKING ABOUT THE “CORPORATIONS” THAT COUNT THE VOTES. THIS IS WERE THERE CAN BE SUBTLE MANIPULATION OF THE VOTE COUNT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE OUTCOME. THE CORPORATIONS HAVE NOT RELEASED THE DETAILED COMPUTER PROGRAMS OF HOW THEY COUNT THE VOTE. IF WE TRULY WANT TRANSPARENCY, LETS START THERE.

I AM REMINDED OF A QUOTE… “IT IT ENOUGH THAT THE PEOPLE KNOW THERE WAS AN ELECTION.THE PEOPLE WHO CAST THE VOTES DECIDE NOTHING. THE PEOPLE WHO COUNT THE VOTES DECIDE EVERYTHING.” ….JOSEPH STALIN. NEED I SAY MORE.

DIANE HAMBURG
Christopher Izor

As a recently graduated undergraduate, I was much more interested and involved in local politics and the economy of my college town of Tuscaloosa, AL, than I did with Birmingham suburbs, which is where my ID’s lists the permanent address of my parents’ home. While I didn’t face pushback at the polls in Tuscaloosa, the hostility toward typically liberal voting groups in my state, I always felt hesitant and that perhaps I would be challenged when voting. Hearing about growing restrictions on the ease of voting worries me, especially because those restrictions target people like me – young, residentially transient, and interested in ditching my reliance on my car (and thus my license and the occasionally high fees associated with updating it).
Finance Phil

Voter ID laws are voter suppression. Is there a cost involved in obtaining state issued picture ID’s absolutely. Whether that cost is monetary, time spent or inconvenience, there is clearly a cost. A cost that is a barrier to voting. Florida ran a similar purge of felons prior to the 2000 election with similar results. Numerous voters were incorrectly purged from voter rolls; some were never notified until they went to vote. The 2000 election ended up being decided by 1 vote; 5-4 in the Supreme Court. There are criminal penalties for perpetrating voter fraud; I don’t recall anyone in Florida ever being held accountable for the purge in 2000 or the current purge. In presenting their case, proponents of ID laws only have to demonstrate that people voted who shouldn’t have voted. In order to prove their case, opponents have to prove that voters didn’t vote because barriers were in place; that sounds like having to prove a negative which is not logically possible.
- BrokenTusk
  
  Illegal votes are also voter suppression. If someone is running around voting multiple times, or putting fake ballots into play, they suppress the legit vote of their opposition just as much as a corrupt polling official that stops a legit voter from voting.
  
  Voter suppression is a bad thing, both the Left and the Right need to work together to stop all forms of it.
  - SuzanneNYC
    
    Despite searching and searching — spending millions of tax payer dollars on this fruitless effort — there is no credible evidence of voter fraud in the US — nothing that would impact the legitimacy of our voting system. It is a pernicious fantasy. If anything these Voter ID Laws are an attempt to suppress the rights of legitimate voters by creating onerous burdens. And the fact that nearly a million US citizens who previously had no problems will potentially be disenfranchised in one state alone would be proof of that.
Quichotte

A solution in search of a problem:

Wait until state officials learn that they will likely be required to offer educational programs to inform voters of the requirements of voter id laws.

Wait until they learn that the Supreme Court has ruled that Photo ID’s must be provided free of charge and that they may be required to pay the costs of obtaining required supporting documentation. A Missouri voter ID law was struck down because the cost of obtaining secondary documents was equivalent to a poll tax.

Wait until they learn that they will likely be required to open and staff new ID-Issuing offices and to extend office hours at existing offices in order to make ID’s readily accessible to their citizens without undue burden.

State officials may determine that there are more pressing issues on which they ought to allocate their tax dollars
Meg

I was sorry to hear that the evidence that these laws will prevent voting is anecdotal. Well then, here is my anecdote.

My mother, a very well-informed and avid voter was living in an Assisted Living facility, until her recent death, in PA, where we brought her from Ohio. She was very debilitated, wheelchair bound and on oxygen. Her photo ID was an Ohio Driver’s License, which expired while she was here and obviously unable to drive anymore.

We tried to get her a PA photo ID, but the only place we could get it was 40 minutes away and would have required us to hire an ambulance to take her there. The irony is that the polling place was the dayroom of her Assisted Living facility- but she would not have been able to vote.
- Guest
  
  Meg, I understand this because we are in the process of finding or reordering my Mom’s birth certificate so she can vote. Due to an accident, a lost purse (stolen), and now assisted living, we must get all of this together, quickly. Regardless, I am in support of an ID for all persons and I am a Democrat.
Patti

I live in Oregon and we have “Vote by Mail.” It works and I have not heard of any voter fraud. We sign our ballots and the signatures are compared to what is on file. I shortened my signature and one year Jackson County (where I live) challenged the ballot and I had to explain the difference. Even with the convenience of “Vote by Mail” we still don’t have great voting turnouts. I feel that there little or no voter fraud and there shouldn’t be any photo ID. Hard enough to get people to vote to begin with.
SuzanneNYC

There is no voter fraud. Republican hypocrisy knows no bounds. The fact that Republican state legislature have rammed through these restrictive laws that solve a non-existent problem should be a wake up call to those of use who value living in a participatory democracy. Eric Holder is correct: these are poll taxes — if not in name than in effect.
Guest

People need to be responsible and society needs to quit making excuses for the ones who won’t take care of their responsibilites. Get your ID’s and quit making excuses and whining!
Dee

Robin,

I have been following the news on this suppression of the vote by the GOP and in the�
case of voter ID i believe the disenfrachisement of many democratic voters ……
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UUKj-7_9rU ) See also History of the vote

Here are some more Letters to editor of the New York Times on this……
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/opinion/the-effort-to-disenfranchise-voters.html?_r=1

Just a few days ago I read a piece in Haaretz on the former Bush Whitehouse spokesman�
Ar i Fleisher in Jerusalem with an Zionist Organizer urging Israelis with duel citizenship�
to vote for Romney in the coming November against Obama…..See the URL below….

http://www.haaretz.com/news/u-s-elections-2012/u-s-republican-ari-fleischer-obama-forcing-israel-to-make-harmful-concessions.premium-1.450350
Dee

addendum:

I predict the 2012 election will not be nothing like the 2000 election if the result are tight�
as people will not accept a Romney presidency and see him as corruption of the vote by Big Money ….

In addition, any court’s intervention or decision on the election results will not be accepted�
by the people as the Robert’s court has proven itself to be an ideological court ..accepting all
government arguments without adequate oversight and scrutiny to disenfranchize individual rights on the war on terror… It is all going to backfire in November …Wall Street and its�
robber barons and the undoing of the New Deal by the GOP leadership and Romney him-
self…
mike

I’m not sure how people “navigate” the overall system in the US without an ID that “proves” who you are. I don’t think I can walk into the Social Security Administration without showing an ID. Banks want to see one from time to time. Many times hospitals want to see one. How do you get any governmental program without an ID? One of my recently deceased Mother’s proudest possessions was her 1936 issued Social Security card when she was making $.25 per hour. She also thought highly of President Roosevelt since his minimum wage law increased her hourly wage by 10% from $.225 to $.25. When she gave up her driver’s license the state issued her a state ID card. It’s not that hard.
J Frog

…..and no one cheats on SATs.
I come from a large family. As we came of age, we all registered to vote at the old homestead in Pontiac, Michigan. As time when on, my sister Kathryn moved to Florida some 25+ years ago, hasn’t voted in Michigan all that time…YET SHE IS STILL REGISTERED TO VOTE IN PONTIAC! Sister Ann was married 15 years ago, moved to a neighboring community, registered to vote there….YET SHE IS STILL REGISTERED TO VOTE IN PONTIAC! See my attached pic.
I don’t know…maybe its because I come from an accounting background. We have these things called “controls”. When an invoice from a vendor arrives, we just don’t pay it. We do things like…check for a signed requisition from someone in authority, we check for a signed purchase order, 3 quotes from various vendors to make sure we are getting a fair deal, a signed verified packing slip to make sure we received the goods, we compare the invoice with our purchase order to make sure they match, and then we require two signatures on the check we send to the vendor. Even with all these approvals and signatures, at year end we have an outside accounting firm come in and audit our books. Do we go through all this because we don’t trust our employees? To protect us from thieves working for us? Of course not!! We do this to give the Bank and our shareholders CONFIDENCE that our company is running efficiently and CONFIDENCE the the numbers in our monthly and annual reports is accurate.
Back to the polls. Now has anyone voted using my sisters names after they moved away and changed voting districts? I have absolutely no idea….that’s the point! Here are two bogus “Voter Identification Cards” just in my family…how many others are out there? Probably thousands! There are no audits, no checks, no nothing! Of course, if someone had to provide a picture ID it would give me a lot more CONFIDENCE that the system isnt as broke as I think it is.
Lancepeeples

Pretending that this issue is anything other than voter suppression makes one a fool or a tool. Listen to Paul Weyrich, founder of ALEC, back in 1980:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Interesting_ALEC_Quotes
http://freeandequalpa.wordpress.com/ freeandequalpa

The voters who sued to challenge the PA Photo ID Law — all citizens
(one a veteran) who are registered to vote and have been voting for
years — do not have have and, more importantly, cannot obtain one of
the approved forms of photo ID. Therefore, they are disenfranchised by
the law. You can read more about it by clicking on my username and
selecting “Summary of Applewhite Petition” at the top of the page.

Disenfranchising voters to solve a non-existent problem makes no
sense. The fact is, there is no evidence that voter impersonation fraud
— the only type of fraud a requirement that voters show ID can prevent
— is actually occurring. If voter impersonation was widespread or
even happening occasionally, you would expect to see evidence that
voters showed up at polls only to learn that someone already had voted
for them. You also would expect to hear evidence that, every once in a
while, an impersonator is caught because the poll workers or poll
watchers know the voter that the impersonator is attempting to
impersonate or the impersonator is unable to convincingly forge the real
voter’s signature. But I have not seen any such evidence.

Also, it would be extremely easy to perform an empirical study to
determine if voter impersonation fraud was occurring: (1) check the
poll books to see whether people who died before any given election
signed in to vote; (2) contact a statistically significant number of
voters who signed in to vote at any election and ask whether they in
fact voted; and (3) check to see whether anyone who fraudulently
registered to vote actually signed in to vote. The fact that the proponents of the law have not done this study (or, if they have, have not published the results) is telling.
Barbara Patrizzi

Democrats claim that the Voter ID Bill is a Republican tactic to block voter access. However, Democrats are just as guilty of using tactics to block voter and ballot access, and they send up an outcry for voter’s rights only when votes for their own party are threatened.
For example, the Voters Choice Act and two Open Primaries Bills have languished for years in our PA legislature with almost no support from either major party. This insures that independent voters (at least 10% of voters in PA) continue to pay taxes for the critical first rounds of the voting process but are blocked from voting in them, and at the same time, alternative candidates are systematically thwarted from ever even getting their names on election ballots. On top of these inequities, there is re-districting/jerrymandering by the major parties.It is not really voter and ballot access, but rather their own self-preservation that major party politicians care most about.The fact is that elections are rigged by politicians, for politicians, because the two party system encourages partisan gamesmanship above all else. We need real reforms for our political process so that voters have more choice, more voice, and more power than the two-party system allows. Voters in agreement with this assessment should voice their support for the Voters Choice Act and the Open Primaries bills.
Guest, too

I am concerned voter ID laws may be ineffective in assuring a
voter is who he/she purports to be. What level of training is necessary for
poll workers to be able to make consistent and accurate discernments between
legitimate and false identification documents?

My identity was recently stolen. The thief has a fraudulent driver license identical
to those issued by my state. It bears the thief’s
photo and my detailed information, including my actual driver license number.�
The thief successfully used this identification to cash fraudulent
checks on my accounts, obtain and use credit card data for purchases in the thousands
of dollars, apply for credit cards, etc.�
I believe this individual could visit my polling place with the
fraudulent license and cast a vote. I
fear it would be incumbent on me to prove my right to vote, should I arrive at the polls after this individual.

Identification fraud/theft is widespread and false documents
abound. The proposals I hear about voter identification requirements do not make me confident they will successfully address voter fraud.
ChelseaLynn3292

What about those people in poverty who not only dont have the money to purchase an ID, but probably dont have transportation even if they were free?