Do you have a current photo ID? If not, you may be denied your Constitutional right to vote in 2012. Seven states (Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin) have enacted or hope to enact “strict photo ID” laws. This means that a person must have a valid, government-issued ID (driver’s license, passport, military ID, etc.) in order to cast a ballot. If one does not have such a document, they can cast a provisional ballot, and present a photo ID to election officials within a specified number of days (between two and six days, depending on the state). Done in an effort to prevent fraud, these laws only disenfranchise voters and attempt to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
This debate about requiring a photo ID to vote will be renewed with the recent Department of Justice decision striking down South Carolina’s photo ID statute. Because non-white voters are disproportionately without photo ID, the DOJ found this law would have the effect of preventing “tens of thousands” of minority voters from exercising their rights, violating the Fifteenth Amendment. A similar law in Texas is currently being reviewed by the DOJ, and opponents of that law hope the South Carolina decision leads to the Texas law being similarly struck down. Because these states fall under the jurisdiction of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, their voting laws are subject to administrative review at the Federal level before they can be changed. In states without such jurisdiction, it is up to private parties to bring a lawsuit in order to get these laws overturned (which they have in Wisconsin, with the help of the ACLU, in Frank v. Walker).
While these laws are ostensibly enacted to prevent voter fraud, studies have found that such laws don’t address the problems they intend to correct. The Brennan Center for Justice has done perhaps the most extensive review of the allegations of voter fraud, and examined just how these photo ID laws may help to prevent it. Their research has found that the overwhelming majority of allegations of fraud are either a matter of clerical error or an unsubstantiated claim.
To look at the individual cases is to get a very stark idea of how great this problem isn’t. In Missouri, for instance, during the heated 2000 presidential election, there were widespread allegations of fraud within St. Louis City and County, led by some prominent Missouri politicians. That year, 2.3 million ballots were cast in the state. Of those, there were six substantiated cases of fraud, all six cases being instances of double voting. Wisconsin, after its 2004 gubernatorial election, also had politicians clamoring about widespread fraud and abuse. Of the 2.9 million ballots cast in that election, there were seven substantiated cases of fraud in counted ballots, all cases of convicted felons voting when ineligible. In neither of these states would presentation of a photo ID at the polling place have prevented the fraud. Rather, it would simply prevent those too poor or without proper documentation to obtain a state ID from voting. From this evidence, it is fair to ask if these laws are really about preventing fraud or if they are an attempt to suppress votes from a demographic that typically supports one political party versus the other.
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