Voter ID Laws Rankle Left
Filed under: Democracy, Legal Matters, Voter ID — marc moore on May 24, 2008 @ 10:11 pm CEST
Legal scholar Jeffery Toobin thinks laws requiring voters to show a valid picture ID before voting are biased in favor of Republicans. This argument makes sense given the affinity of poorer Americans to vote Democratic. But is that relevant? Two principles of free and fair elections are contradictory, that we count every vote and that every vote be from a legal voter. A picture ID seems to be the ideal compromise.
Toobin:
I thought it was a bad decision, but a predictable one because it was a very clear attempt by Republicans to stop Democrats from voting.
Ali from Think Progress:
…there are as many as 21 million voting-age Americans without driver’s licenses. Thirteen percent of registered Indiana voters lack the documents needed to obtain state identification.
Indeed, getting one’s identification in order can be an annoying process, particularly for the elderly, infirm, and/or poor. However, the presidential election is more than 5 months away. That’s plenty of time for every interested voter to get their paperwork in order.
Every election has its inconsistencies, the Bush/Gore fiasco in Florida being only the most infamous example. Between electronic voting and voter identification the validity of upcoming elections will be better than ever before. I would think that the losing side of the Bush/Gore recount would be in favor of any mechanism that would ensure no such mess happens again.
Judging from the comments on Ali’s post that’s not the case. Numerous people call the voter ID law a form of poll tax, which is ridiculous on the face of it.
The obvious solution would be to put a picture on the voter ID card that voters - at least in Texas - are required to present. How hard is that?
1 BJ
May 25, 2008 @ 1:48 am CESTI’m still waiting for someone to explain how they use photo ID to confirm the mail-in ballots.
2 tonto
May 25, 2008 @ 2:02 am CESTThe same way I just paid my traffic fine, with a photocopy of the ID.
3 robocaller
May 25, 2008 @ 8:27 am CESTA lot of Democrats I’ve heard on this issue have stated that there is unambiguously no problem in our country with voter fraud. But one of the complaints of Republicans during the whole 2000 election season was that Democrats were involved in getting people who were not legal voters to the voting booths.
So with this "Legal scholar Jeffery Toobin thinks laws requiring voters to show a valid picture ID before voting are biased in favor of Republicans." Why is it not legitimate to question—maybe Democrats are involved in voter fraud efforts, and that’s why they don’t want a voter ID law.
4 BJ
May 25, 2008 @ 8:41 pm CESTTonto,
Interesting, but doesn’t answer the question. I take photo ID down to the voting booth so they can match the photo to my face and ensure that it is really me voting. Who matches the photo to the face when you mail it in?
5 robocaller
May 25, 2008 @ 9:17 pm CESTBJ, since only registered voters receive absentee ballots in the mail, I doubt its a huge problem. I assume by whatever means you get an absentee ballot, something is verified against registration databases.
6 tonto
May 26, 2008 @ 1:29 am CESTRobo is right. Do you really believe that they are going to give you a ’mail in ballot’ then let you walk in and vote again?
7 Orson Buggeigh
May 27, 2008 @ 3:45 am CESTVoter ID makes very good sense. It is a reasonable compromise to protect the public from voter fraud. Mr. Toobin protests too much. The locations where voter fraud has historically been a problem have been, *ahem!* Democratic strongholds. I’m sure one reason some Democratic party operatives object is that it might abolish those fine old big city machine traditions of voting early and voting often, and the miracle of the dead being resurrected to vote (Democratic, natch!) in select precincts.
While there has been much made of the re-count in Florida in 2000, perhaps we should revisit the election of 1960. It might be interesting to re-count the ballots from the precincts in Texas and Illinois that allegedly were fraudulently cast, supposedly costing Richard Nixon the election.
Both parties try to do what they can to increase the turnout of people likely to vote for their candidates. However, it seems that everyone is better served by preventing fraud - and voter ID seems like a very reasonable means to do this. I don’t see it as inherently favoring one political party any more than another, unless one of the parties is cheating. In which case, the cheating party stands to lose more from voter ID than the party playing honestly. So why are the Dems so unhappy? Guilty conscience?