Voter ID Laws
Last weekend, I pulled a little stunt to make a point about voter ID laws. I chose to use the gun rights movement as an example here, because many of their legitimate complaints about various gun control laws (e.g., that they harm the law abiding more than the potential criminals, that they’re ineffective, etc.) apply to voter ID laws. But in the case of voter ID laws, these arguments are even stronger.
The truth of the matter is, voter fraud is vanishingly rare. In two of the most contested elections in recent memory (Washington’s gubernatorial race in 2004 and Ohio’s presidential election), fewer than one vote per 100,000 was found to be fraudulent (0.00009% and 0.00004%, respectively). To put this into perspective, if you rounded up to 0.0001% and applied that rate of voter fraud to Florida’s presidential in 2000, it would have amounted to fewer than 600 total votes — not enough to change the result of that election even if every single fraudulent vote were cast for the same candidate.
Meanwhile, requiring a photo ID to vote could disenfranchise nearly 10% of the eligible population, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In other words, it would potentially inhibit 1,000,000 times as many legitimate voters as fraudulent voters.
Set aside, for the moment, whether you think an ID requirement seems “reasonable,” and ask yourself whether it’s really worth passing a new law, and making eligible voters jump through hoops they’d otherwise not have to jump through, to solve a problem that all the evidence suggests is statistically insignificant.
(Why, then, is there such a big push for voter ID requirements? The cynical answer is to look at the demographics of the eligible voters who are most likely to lack a state-issued photo ID, and to look at who they typically vote for.)
If you’re worried about the integrity of our elections, the much bigger fish is computerized voting. Even ignoring the potential for fraud and abuse at the machine level, the machines are simply more prone to errors than the individual voter fraud rate.
Read the full report from the Brennan Center here (PDF).
UPDATE: I did the “early voting” thing tonight, and while I was there, I asked the poll worker about voting without a photo ID. He told me that here in Tennessee, no photo ID is required. A voter registration card (which has no photo) is sufficient. If you have neither a photo ID nor a voter registration card, you can fill out an “oath of voter” card, and you may then cast a provisional ballot, which gets counted once the information you provided can be verified and matched against an existing registration. I didn’t ask if it was possible to register to vote on site, and he didn’t say.
UPDATE 2: You can see what the voter ID requirements are in your state the 25 ID-requiring states here.
UPDATE 3: Some have questioned the Brennan Center’s estimate that nearly 10% of eligible voters lack photo ID. I found another study, this one from American University (PDF) that claims that 1.2% of registered voters lack photo ID — roughly 2 million registered voters. It’s not apples-to-apples, since you’re dealing with registered voters on one hand and eligible voters on the other, but even with the more conservative number, a photo ID requirement would prevent 120,000 times as many legitimate voters as fraudulent voters. The AU study reveals another interesting characteristic, and one the cynic in me thinks is the real reason behind the push for photo ID requirements: of those registered voters who lack photo ID, over 87% are Democrats, while fewer than 7% are Republicans. (They’re also overwhelmingly females 45 and older.)
seems like there is an obvious middle ground. Hand out photo ID when a voter registers. Next issue…
Man, I hope you’re kidding…
[...] Tgirsch has posted on the lack of a need for Voter ID laws. After telling us how rare voter fraud is, he says, ….requiring a photo ID to vote could disenfranchise nearly 10% of the eligible population, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In other words, it would potentially inhibit 1,000,000 times as many legitimate voters as fraudulent voters. [...]
why would I be kidding?
Because the logistics of what you suggest would be extremely prohibitive. You would either have to massively expand where you could obtain a photo ID, or massively reduce when/where you could register to vote. And again, you’d be doing all this to solve a problem that for all intents and purposes does not exist. (And to the infinitesimal extent that it does exist, a large percentage of those cases would not be solved by photo ID requirements, per the report.)
Side question: When was the last time you went to obtain a photo ID, and how long did it take? In my case, it was a little over thirteen months ago, and it took nearly three hours.
There’s another problem with the “hand out IDs” idea: In most cases that I’ve experienced, I was getting a photo ID under conditions where my identity was already known, e.g., at work or adding a photo to an existing driver’s license. The only case where additional proof of identity was required that springs to mind was getting a passport.
But the idea of a voter ID card is to prove your identity, so strictly as a practical matter you’d need to be able to prove your identity in order to get one. Which makes “just hand them out” impossible. And if the information produced in order to register is sufficient to prove your identity, it should also be sufficient at voting time, which renders the photo ID unnecessary – and which also means the entire process provides no protection against supposed “fraud via impersonation” except insofar as it stiffens the ID requirements to register, additional requirements which inevitably place a greater burden on poorer voters.
Interestingly, in an interview with KCRW radio on January 8, IN Sec. of State Todd Rokita was unable to point to any actual evidence whatsoever of voter impersonation, simply and blandly claiming that he “believes” it “happens all the time.” That’s the basis on which we’re to put roadblocks in the paths of poor voters.
Well, I’m glad they still accept the pinky-swear as a form of identification for voting.
Have you accepted my suggestion to try to buy a firearm? It could only bolster your arguments, and what a great post it would make!
I don’t need to buy a firearm. We already own two.
And, of course, your sarcastic “pinky swear” remark still ignores the fact that voter fraud is a non-problem, and therefore in no need of a solution.
5 minutes last time I got a photo ID at DMV.
Equipment is probably about $1000 per location. Lets put 1000 in every state. Total cost $50,000,000. Hardly “prohibitive”. More like peanuts. Hell, make it 10,000 in each state and still negligible cost (think Federal grant).
No need to provide other ID if you don’t have one. Will still produce 99.99% of desired effect.
Phase in over 4 years. Have equipment at polling places too…
IDs issued without other verification are marked in database. Voter has 4 years to supply verification.
This issue can be solved six ways to Sunday without adverse impact, if we want to.
Ted:
Even if we were to grant all of that, the question remains: Why bother? You’ve already got 99.9999% of the “desired effect” (no voter fraud) with no photo ID requirement, and no additional cost to the taxpayers.
And, of course, if the ID is issued “without verification,” then how is that any better than no ID?
If your ID only took you five minutes, consider yourself exceptionally lucky. Many places, it isn’t that way. I’ve lived in three states, and I don’t think a trip to the DMV has ever taken less than an hour…
A footnote to Update 2: The list only includes the 25 states that require presenting ID at the time of voting.
How about a DNA swab, or a retina scan…
Hey, whatever, I like my voter ID verification the same way I liked my local bodegas’ when I was 14 and wanted to swig a 40! The honor system, baby!
Besides, the volunteers at my local polling spots are like 75+ and senile. Even assuming they required ID, I could hand over an Oscar Gamble baseball card and they wouldn’t notice anything strange.
I’m 5′6″, white, and have a buzz cut, by the way.
ya, older people are a joke. bunch of imbeciles.
I really enjoy reading your blog, it always has great insight. But I am very frustrated with the media’s lack of questions to the presidential candidates about global warming. Now that it is down to just a few candidates I would think that this would be a bigger issue.
Live Earth just picked up this topic and put out an article ( http://www.liveearth.org/news.php ) asking why the presidential candidates are not being solicited for their stance on the issue of the climate change. I just saw an article describing each candidate’s stance on global warming and climate change on earthlab.com http://www.earthlab.com/articles/PresidentialCandidates.aspx . So obviously they care about it. Is it the Medias fault for not asking the right questions or is it the candidates’ fault for not highlighting the right platforms? Does anyone know of other websites or articles that touch on this subject and candidates’ views? This is the biggest problem of the century and for generations to come…you would think the next president of the United States would be more vocal about it.
Tgirsch, could you please correct the cite that up to 10% of the eligible voting population would be disenfranchised? I followed the link you provided and found only that some other website also believes in this “up to 10%” number. I need something more substantial than that, sorry.
Nevertheless, I think I could get behind this “voting without ID is an inalienable right” theory. We also know now that you support rolling back anti-RKBA legislation to pre-68 levels, but can you tell me where you and Steny Hoyer are on the following additional inalienable rights?
Traveling around on the public roadways and interstates without government issued ID.
Acquiring a fishing license without showing government issued ID.
Opening a bank account without showing government issued ID.
Flying on an airplane without showing government issued ID.
Acquiring a library card and checking out a book from the public library without showing government issued ID.
Getting married without an ID (well, you can actually do this if you travel to one of the few remaining states that still allow “common law” marriage, but it’s probably best practice to get the marriage notarized, and to do that, you would need a government issued ID.)
Getting through all the federally required paperwork, (without breaking the law), after being hired at a private employer without showing government issued ID.
Purchase pseudoephedrine decongestant over-the-counter without showing government issued ID.
Get a passport without showing government issued ID.
Get a security clearance to work on a government contract without showing government issued ID.
Rent a P.O. Box, or pick up your general delivery mail without showing government issued ID.
Purchase beer and cigarettes on your 21st birthday without showing government issued ID
Good thing you can pay by check for the fee to issue your government issued ID without showing government issued ID. You just need to show the appropriate non-government issued identity documents.
SM:
I’ll see if I can find better substantiation for the “nearly 10%” figure. [I've updated the post with other figures.]
As to your other points, the main problem you have is that you conflate “government-issued ID” with photo ID. A voter registration card is a government-issued ID, for example. You also list things which, almost without exception, are not explicitly-protected rights like voting. Anyway:
- As long as you’re not operating a motor vehicle, you can legally travel wherever you want on the public roadways and interstates with no ID whatsoever.
- At least here in Tennessee, hunting and fishing licenses may be obtained without photo ID. All that’s required is proof of residency, and that can come in the form of a current utility bill.
- You can open a bank account on-line, with just a social security number and a date of birth, without ever showing ID of any kind.
- Believe it or not, you CAN fly on an airplane without a photo ID. We learned this the hard way after my wife’s wallet was stolen a little over a year ago. But even if you haven’t had one stolen, you can still fly without photo ID:
- You can get a library card, here in Memphis, without a government-issued ID of any kind:
- In Tennessee, a birth certificate and social security number are all you need to get a marriage license.
- You can get a job pretty much anywhere with a social security card and another form of ID, that need not be a photo ID.
- You’re right about pseudoephedrine. The requirement to show a photo ID to buy it is a bunch of crap, and I oppose that, too.
- A passport is itself a photo ID, but you don’t need a photo ID to obtain one. Just a birth certificate or other proof of citizenship.
- I have no idea what’s required to get a security clearance, but it’s hardly the same thing as voting on the “rights-and-privileges-o-meter.” And in any case, from what I can find, you need proof of citizenship, not necessarily photo ID (although they’re certain to issue one if you don’t have one).
- I’m pretty sure you can get a post office box without a photo ID.
- Most places, people over 30 can purchase beer and cigarettes with no requirement to show photo ID. But in any case, you’ve got one narrow case of where a photo ID is required. And again, it’s not to exercise a protected right like voting. Anyway, underage drinking is a widespread problem (unlike voter fraud), so the state can show a compelling interest in requiring sellers to verify photo identification in these circumstances.
In other words, virtually everything on your list can be done by most people without having a photo ID. And there are plenty of people who don’t do most of what’s on your list.
But the bottom line here is that even if the 10% figure is way off — even if it’s 1% — requiring photo ID to vote would do exponentially more to disenfranchise legal voters than it would to prevent voter fraud, a statistically insignificant problem.
I look at it differently. Lack of voter participation is the issue, not fraud. But a widespread perception of fraud will keep some folks away from polls. Also there is a perception of value at play here. A lack of effort to secure the integrity of the vote can translate into voter apathy.
I say teach the importance of voting in HS. Allow all seniors to register in civics class. give ‘em a picture ID. The age issue can be handled trivially, so forget it.
TG, please explain the mechanism by which a person can be disenfranchised by issuing photo IDs. (Keep in mind we are not born with a photo ID so every who has one was originally issued one withone providing one.)
Ted:
I defy you to provide evidence that a significant number of people stay away from the polls because the perception of individual voter fraud makes them apathetic (especially as compared to, say, institutional fraud, or the lack of quality of the candidates, or just the sheer numbers making people think that “my vote doesn’t matter”).
Now I agree that securing the integrity of the vote is hugely important. I just don’t see any evidence that photo ID requirements serve that purpose. I mean, what would it really accomplish? As I said above, audit trails for the ballots and voting machines themselves would be a much bigger fish, and do far more in service of that goal.
As for the “mechanism” of disenfranchisement, I’m not sure exactly what needs explaining about it. If you institute an ID requirement, anyone who is legally eligible to vote but does not have a photo ID cannot vote, and is therefore disenfranchised. Some people (more than you might think) don’t need photo ID in their day-to-day lives, and so choose not to bother with the hassle of getting one. Why should those people be denied what is arguably the most basic right of citizenship, based on that decision? (It’s worth noting that people without photo IDs are overwhelmingly poor, elderly, or both.)
I guess I’m a little perplexed as to why you’re so eager to force people to get a photo ID in the service of solving a nonexistent problem.
i’m not that worried about it. i’m just showing it could easily be implemented – if everyone would be reasonable.
your “must have photo id to get a meaningful photo id” logic is a tad forced. take a breath, stop trying to discredit all opposition, and I bet you can fiure out how to handle voters without picture ids without me having to spell it out for you.
Ted:
Where have I argued that you need a photo ID to get one? I’m confused about where you may have gotten that impression.
And my argument the whole time is that we’ve already effectively figured out how to handle voters without picture IDs. It’s a “problem” not in need of solving. Neither you nor anyone else needs to spell it out, because it’s already taken care of. The whole push to require photo ID to vote is much ado about nothing, and that’s been my point the entire time.
You can argue that the problems it causes aren’t significant, but it’s still beyond dispute that it would cause more problems than it solves.
So you are saying that those without picture ID are somehow permanantly disabled rom getting one. Even in light of my comment #1 and your comment “Where have I argued that you need a photo ID to get one? I’m confused about where you may have gotten that impression.”
seems the disenfranchisement argument is a bit of a red herring.
So you are saying that those without picture ID are somehow permanantly disabled rom getting one.
*sigh* No, Ted, that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that they shouldn’t have to. If they’re getting by just fine without a photo ID, why force them to get one just to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote?
And in the case of more restrictive ID laws like Indiana’s, you can have a photo ID and still be denied the right to vote, for example if you’ve recently moved, because all the information on your ID has to exactly match what’s in the voter registry.
All I’m saying is that getting a state-issued photo ID can be a hassle (and, in some states, can currently cost $85 or more), and since there’s no compelling reason to require one to vote, we shouldn’t require one to vote. It doesn’t seem that controversial to me.
But you don’t seem to think that there’s anything wrong with inconveniencing 2 million American voters just for the sake of seeming “reasonable” and doing something about a problem that’s exceedingly rare, and that a photo ID wouldn’t fix in most cases anyway.
I just don’t see how the disenfranchisement argument is a red herring. Suppose someone was lazy, or forgetful, and allowed their photo ID to expire. And since they rarely or never use it, they didn’t even think about it until election day. You’re arguing that denying them their right to vote because of this isn’t disenfranchisement? I don’t get it. Does not compute.
no, they get one right there at the voting place and proceed to vote. I assume it has to be difficult; I assume it can be made easy.
If inconveniencing voters is the issue, then lets make it a law that all elections are held on Saturday when most people are not working and the schools can be used as polling places. No doubt mid-week elections keep many more from the pools than IDs do.
Ted:
I’m assuming that your first sentence should be read as “[tgirsch] assumes …; [Ted] assumes …”
But in any case, even if your proposed solution could be made as easy as you claim, it would be opposed by those who favor requiring a photo ID to vote, because it wouldn’t prevent anyone from voting who can vote right now. Indeed, you could argue that it would be worse, because anyone who can currently falsify their identity in order to vote could now also easily get a state-issued photo ID in support of that falsified identity. It would actually make things worse, from their perspective.
And I still have an underlying objection that you seem to be missing. I don’t want to become a police state, where all of the rights of citizenship are contingent upon being able to provide a state-issued photo identification. Think of the stereotypical cinematic “Papers, please,” and you get the idea of what I’d like to avoid. Now, there are certainly circumstances where the state has a compelling interest in requiring such identification, but I don’t think this is one of them, and I think it ought to be the exception, rather than the rule. My basic rights as a citizen should not be revoked simply because I don’t happen to have my driver’s license on my person.
If inconveniencing voters is the issue, then lets make it a law that all elections are held on Saturday when most people are not working and the schools can be used as polling places.
See, now you’re talking about addressing a problem that is legitimately in need of addressing. Move elections to a Saturday, or make election day a national holiday.
“or make election day a national holiday”
obviously you didn’t think that one through..
I don’t think people necessarily should have to show a photo ID to vote, but I think some proof of citizenship ought to be required. Non-citizens aren’t allowed to vote, right. How do you prevent this if you don’t ask everyone voting to reasonably prove they are a citizen?
You say that voting fraud is not a problem but there is no tracking. How can you possibly know whether a given vote was fraudulently cast? Or whether a registration is fraudulent? identity theft anyone? Isn’t that a huge problem in this country?
Ted:
Why do you say that? Sure, not everyone gets every national holiday off, but then not everyone gets Saturdays off, either.
Matt:
The problem with the identity theft argument in this context is that requiring a photo ID doesn’t do anything to stop that. Further, with the exception of a passport, most state-issued photo ID is not considered to be a valid proof of citizenship.
In any case, I don’t think it’s fair to say that there is “no tracking.” As shown in the links, Ohio and Washington were very closely scrutinized in 2004, as was Florida in 2000, with no evidence of widespread (or even statistically significant) voter fraud. It’s true that absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence, but in this case I think the burden of proof is on the proponents of photo ID requirements to show that (A) individual voter fraud is a problem worth solving, and (B) requiring a photo ID would actually work to solve the problem. As noted in the linked study, there were very, very few documented cases of individual voter fraud, and in most of those cases, a photo ID requirement wouldn’t have prevented (or didn’t prevent) the individual from voting fraudulently.
Now, as you point out, identity theft is a problem worth solving, for reasons that go way beyond elections, but voter ID requirements don’t solve that problem at all.
because elections are, in general, held on different days in different locations..
National elections are always held on the first Tuesday in November. But you’re right, for local and state elections, as well as primaries, it’s still a problem.
Then again, if you made all general elections the first Tuesday in November, even the state and local ones, then you’d only have a problem for special elections and primaries.
tgirsch, to start off, “explicitly-protected rights like voting”, WTF? I’ll remind you yet again that I have at least a billion inalienable rights, including the right to yell “theater” in a crowded fire and the right to keep and bear pseudoephedrine hydrochloride. Please don’t wander down the same path as former Attorney Jackass, Alberto Gonzales.
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are instructions to the government on what it may do and what powers it has been granted. Just because it doesn’t cover pseudoephedrine doesn’t make that right any less valid. You’ll recall that they had to pass a brand spanking new Amendment and then pass the Volstead Act before we the people felt government had the power to regulate the drug ethyl alcohol.
I brought up the you-can’t-do-jack-without-ID examples to show that government frequently thinks nothing of imposing the requirement of requiring an ID, and seldom worries about the few people that no longer would be able to exercise that right because the would fail to get the proper ID, oh except when it comes to voting. When that happens, all the big-government, tax-and-spend critters come crawling out of the woodwork and demand that their base be protected. Blah. To that I say, “Remember kids, always hate hypocrites.”
I actually had a cow-orker that, for a time, tried to live without the state issued chit that said he existed. He was able to get stuff out of the library because of less stringent requirements when he first got his card. My local jurisdiction nowadays wants to see photo ID AND proof of address before issuing one now.
He took the bus, so getting his biweekly pass was painless, but I would still assert that we still have the inalienable right to travel around the country, and the requirement to get a chit before driving is over the line as far as I am concerned. (I would imagine I could get about 100% of people waiting in state DMV lines to agree with me that having a private insurance company compete (free market again) with other insurance agents to provide the necessary paperwork that proved I had the minimum amount of insurance coverage based on my experience behind the wheel would be a far better way to go. In addition, I would not have a problem with the state revoking rights to operate a motor vehicle after a drunk driving conviction.)
Getting back to the “always hate hypocrites” part, Steny Hoyer is a staunch defender of the right to vote without ID, yet he appears to have no problem with the requirement that people who chose to drive on the public roads in Maryland automatically consent to a search (Breathalyzer) without the right to consult an attorney first. They use to make us sign a statement, and without that they would withhold your permission slip to drive, but that left an important loophole for people with out-of-state licenses. So now they print a statement on the back of my vehicle registration informing me of my voluntary compliance of waving my civil right the moment I decide to drive on public roadways.
My friend finally had to get an ID after 9-11 because of the “know your customer” regulations put into place. He could no longer cash his check even though he was a bi-weekly regular for decades at the local bank. I suspect that the banking web page that you dug up predates 9-11. That changed everything.
I will concede that for the moment you can still fly without ID. In fact, doing so will frequently bump you to the front of the security theater. I was hoping you would blog about your experience, but at the time, trackbacks were broken on my blog and I don’t think you ever saw my linkage. This loophole will change with the arrival and 50 state compliance with the new (Achtung) REAL ID cards. They will become our Soviet style internal passports.
I’ve included examples with the requirement that you have a Social Security card for a reason, because those numbers are our de facto citizen ID number. I registered to vote my senior year of high school by merely filling out a form. I’ve voted in every general election except for the latest one and I’ve never shown anyone my ID. I’ve never had to even provide my Social Security number, and in fact it’s illegal in Maryland to require a SS#, although recent changes now require either a drivers license number or the last four digits (pdf) of a SS#.
Voting in Maryland is a simple matter of being able to look somewhat like the age and gender that is recorded for the person you are trying to vote as and being able to read and recite the confirming address data while it’s displayed to you upside down at the check-in table.
The lax security over verifying the existence of voting rights is particularly insulting in a state where clerks are required by law to check a photo ID before selling a fishing license. How many people in our high percentage of immigrants area are voting without a proper franchise? How many are voting in our transient area while a legal resident of some other municipality? How many people filled out several voter registration forms when the requirements were even laxer than they are now and spend their day voting early and often in different precincts? Without even casual voter verification it’s impossible to say, but I would not be surprised if it exceeds the 1% that seems somewhat plausible for voters without a photo ID.
It’s funny that both you and the The League of Women Voters got the “voter fraud is minor” meme, yet thinly-veiled democrat Bev Harris over at blackboxvoting.org keeps finding evidence of voter irregularities and significant security vulnerabilities in the Diebold vote-o-matic machines that we use, by statue, here in Maryland (machines that I hasten to add remove any chance of legit recount because the vote count is merely bits easily flip-flopped in a flash memory card)
Look, I have no interest in disenfranchising legitimate voters, but it seems to me that if the state can pay out gazillions of dollars to get the Diebold vote-o-matic machines, they could spring for the expense of a few ID cards for the needy. This isn’t a poll tax or a literacy test, there’s no requirement to solve a quadratic equation before entering the booth, and no one is requiring anyone to be a wealthy white landowner. Comparisons to poll tax or disenfranchising the poor and downtrodden are flat out playing the race card. That’s pretty disgusting in this day and age.
SM:
Jesus Christ, is that a comment, or a manifesto?
Anyway, we get it: you hate government. All the more reason to oppose voter ID laws. Don’t like the other stuff? Work to change it. But as I pointed out after your first rant, virtually everything you listed can, in fact, be done without a photo ID. And, at least two of the cases where a photo ID was required involved engaging in commerce, something the government has an explicitly-listed power to regulate. Further, in one of them, I agreed that the requirement was BS. I’m also on record in opposition to Diebold voting machines (as well as any other paperless voting.) What more do you want from me? Look, you can bitch and whine and piss and moan about all the other stuff that government does because of “tax and spend” types (even though they’re hardly alone in imposing such requirements), but that doesn’t make it relevant to the topic at hand.
You might not like the phrase explicitly-protected rights, but I didn’t make them up. They’re right there in the constitution. No, their existence doesn’t disparage other rights, but those rights were explicitly listed there because people were genuinely concerned that those rights needed special protection, and in most cases because there had been a history of abuse. It wasn’t because they were bored one day, you know.
Bottom line is, until someone can present a compelling case for why we should require a photo ID for voting — and no one so far has even come close to doing so — then it would be a colossal waste of time and money to do so, even if nobody were disenfranchised in the process. I don’t see why Mr.-Anti-Government is coming out in support of a big fat dose of government waste in just this one particular case (although you seem to have hinted that xenophobia might have something to do with it…).
Finally, how the fuck is any of this playing the race card, when I’ve already pointed out that it’s overwhelmingly elderly females who would be disenfranchised by such a requirement?
Tell you what, if you want to continue this discussion, how about trying to stay on topic and sticking to the substance, rather than paranoid rants against “thinly-veiled democrats” and government-except-in-this-case, huh?
Unless you are also equating photo ID = poll tax, I’m not claiming you personally are playing the race card.
I’m not necessary an advocate of photo ID at the polls. I do think we need to screen the rolls somehow, and I think we need to do a better job than we do here in Maryland. I think we can all agree that just letting someone vote based on info that someone mailed in on a form to the state is too lax and invites fraud.
The reason I brought up all the points on what you can’t do without ID is to demonstrate that far too frequently we have hypocrites in government that don’t give a damn about how much bureaucratic bullshit you need to do to exercise a right, oh, except when it comes to voting for them back into office. In other words, their arguments are suspect.
Xenophobic? I’m for open borders, just as soon as I can load up the truck with some shotguns and drive straight down to my beach-front property and house down in Baja Mexico. In other words, the borders need to be open in both ways, for everyone, and not just for corporations. Civil rights must be honored.
Since you have all but conceded that your original estimate (10%) is an entire order of magnitude less, is it possible that your voter fraud estimate is low?
Not all votes are equal. I have a post up on my blog that is tangently related to that. A few hundred additional fraudulent votes either way in Florida would have tipped the balance of a nation.
word count: 272
SM:
In other words, their arguments are suspect.
The ones with the suspect arguments, it seems to me, are the ones who are pushing for a photo ID requirement. No matter what it seems like, the burden of proof is still on the individual making the accusation. But when asked for proof that voter fraud is occurring, the voter ID proponents can provide none. And they’re not even bothering to ask for a comprehensive study to determine if voter fraud is happening; they’re asking for a photo ID requirement to be implemented absent any evidence whatsoever that it’s a necessary step.
Add to all this the fact that the people who are pushing for this are overwhelmingly Republicans, and that the legitimate voters who would be disenfranchised by the move would be overwhelmingly Democratic voters, and I think you’ve got a pretty good circumstantial case that their motives are less than pure.
As to the order of magnitude thing, I’ve cited two different reports whose estimates differ by an order of magnitude, but I don’t explicitly endorse or discount either one of them. I believe I mentioned that I thought the truth was probably somewhere in between. As to the estimates of the actual frequency of voter fraud, they could be off by three orders of magnitude (mind you, there’s no evidence to suggest that they are) and it would still qualify as a non-problem — less than one tenth of one percent of the vote would be fraudulent even in those highly unlikely circumstances, and the overwhelming majority of the fraudulent votes would have to be cast for the same candidate in order for them to swing even an extremely close election.
In any case, I seriously doubt that the voter fraud figures are low, given the inability of voter ID proponents to produce any evidence of widespread fraud, coupled with the fact that the numbers themselves come from disparate comprehensive investigations.
P.S. Why do you need your guns before you go to Baja? Are you afraid of the Mexicans?
[Sorry, but after the xenophobia exchange, I couldn't resist...]
Electronic voter machines don’t leave any paper trails for fraud detection, there’s just nothing to recount. You’re for paper ballots, verifiable chain of custody, and open source software on voting machines rather than security by obscurity, right?
There’s also plenty of fishy stuff documented over at blackboxvoting.org
also: http://www.google.com/search?q=ahaha+18181
I understand that the Bread and Circuses party endorses not only automatic voter registration when you sign up for welfare (per the original “motor voter” law), but actually wants people to be required to vote to continue getting entitlements. Voters would still be able to vote for who they want, so their motives are pure.
Freedom is just another word for finishing up the last of your trans-fat loaded fries and taking your last beer with you in a take-out cup at the local bar, while open carrying, while riding a motorcycle home, without wearing a governmentally required helmet.
SM:
You’re for paper ballots, verifiable chain of custody, and open source software on voting machines rather than security by obscurity, right?
Yes, yes, and maybe, respectively. I would clarify, however, that they should be human-readable paper ballots. Florida’s disastrous punch-cards were technically paper ballots, but they were not human-readable.
Freedom is just another word
I like how John Hodgman paraphrased New Hampshire’s state motto: “Live Free of Motorcycle Helmets and Seat Belts or Die.”