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Voter Fraud Not the Problem. Opponents of Low-Income Voters Are |
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The speed with which Republican-controlled state legislatures around the country are rushing to pass voter ID laws makes it appear as though voter fraud is rampant. But that’s not the case, according to election experts.
Take a look at what Richard Hasen, a distinguished professor at Loyola Marymount University’s law school, writes on Slate:
Beyond a few isolated instances and anecdotes, there is precious little evidence of the kind of voter fraud a state voter ID card requirement would deter. I am aware of no studies finding evidence of any kind of systematic or serious problems with voters casting ballots in someone else’s name, or with voters registering and actually voting using fictitious names.
So what’s up? Democrats say people living in poverty will have a more difficult time securing voter identification. Low-income people tend to drive less (and so won’t have a driver’s license, which is the most common form of ID), and they may not have the money to secure certified copies of documents, such as birth certificates, necessary to obtain a state-issued voter identification. Low-income people also happen to be more likely to vote Democratic.
Wendy Weiser, a law professor at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law and a lawyer in several suits opposing new registration regulations, told The New York Times:
I do believe there is a national trend of using the straw man of voter fraud as a way to impose restrictive regulations on voting and voter registration.
In Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Georgia and Washington State, election activists are going to court to stop voter ID laws. Here’s a rundown.
Ohio: The Republican-led state Legislature in January passed a bill requiring paid voter registration workers to individually submit registration cards to the state, rather than allowing the organizations overseeing the drives to submit them in bulk. Religious, community and other activists have gone to court to have the law struck down. The law is doubly offensive to activists because of an apparent conflict of interest. The official who enforces this law, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, also is the Republican candidate for governor, a race that will be affected by the law.
A nonpartisan study last year by the League of Women Voters found the Ohio law is not even needed. Of more than 9 million votes cast in Ohio in 2002 and 2004, only four ballots were fraudulent, according to statistics provided by officials from the state’s 88 county boards of elections.
Florida: The League of Women Voters and other groups are suing over a new law that imposes heavy fines for candidates if they submit forms late or if there are errors on the forms.
Yale University political science professor Donald Green, a registered Republican, testified in federal court this week that the Sunshine State’s new law could suppress turnout in elections and hamper the ability of labor unions, grassroots groups and other organizations to sign up people who wouldn’t ordinarily vote:
[The Florida law] seems to trample on basic constitutional rights of association and expression. It’s essentially like creating a political moat around certain kinds of groups. They simply will not conduct voter registration drives.
Cynthia Hall, president of the Florida AFL-CIO, told the Associated Press the law has had a “very chilling effect” by effectively stopping the union from conducting its annual drive to register members. She estimated that drive would have signed up about 17,500 new registered voters.
Georgia: The Legislature passed a voter-identification law last year requiring citizens to purchase a government-issued ID card to present at the polls, but the law was blocked (twice) by a federal judge as being a modern-day poll tax that discriminated against people who don’t have driver’s licenses, passports or other government identification.
Indiana: U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker ruled in April that the state’s photo ID law could stand because Democrats failed to show it was too burdensome.
Missouri: Some voters who were disqualified from voting in the recent primaries because they didn’t have identification as required by the state filed a lawsuit last week claiming the law could discourage or prevent people from voting this November and the photo ID requirement infringes on the right to vote under the state constitution.
The Missouri suit also claims the requirement imposes illegal costs on those trying to obtain a photo ID—not for the ID itself, which is free, but for other documentation required to get one, such as a birth certificate—in violation of the constitution’s equal-protection clause. A certified birth certificate is one of the documents voters can use to prove they are lawfully in the country. For those born in Missouri, it costs $15.
Washington State: U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez stopped the state from enforcing a new law that keeps people from registering to vote if their names do not perfectly match identifying information in other government databases.
The law, which took effect Jan. 1, requires the state to compare driver’s licenses, state identification cards or Social Security numbers on registration forms with records from state and federal agencies to ensure that a voter’s information matches. Potential voters could not be registered without a proper match.
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