The following piece was produced by the Huffington Post's OffTheBus project.
Two weeks ago, September 25th, the United States Supreme Court
agreed to consider a case on voter ID laws. The case, appealed in the
seventh circuit court, requires registered voters in the state of
Indiana to provide a government-issued photo ID in order to cast a
ballot. Proponents of the law will tell you that photo IDs are
necessary to combat voter fraud, which is pervasive and insidious. They
will readily speak about "illegal immigrants" who are inundating our
polling places and casting illegitimate votes without providing any
identification. They will also just say that there is no good reason
why someone should not have photo identification; after all, you need
one to drive a car, fly on an airplane, cash a check, or even to rent a
movie.
What proponents of the
bill will not tell you is that, shocking as it may seem, not all
Americans drive cars, fly on planes, or even go to Blockbuster. The
actual evidence of this "rampant" voter fraud is minimal. Arizona,
where voter ID laws were implemented in November of 2006, has 2.7
million registered voters, "238 [of whom] were believed to have been
non-citizens in the last 10 years" according to Joyce Purnick in a
Sept. 26, 2006 article in the New York Times. On top of this, any
undocumented immigrant who is foolish enough to try to vote illegally
will likely receive incarceration if not deportation for such
actions--risks that are clearly not worth the reward.
In its attempt to cordon the throng of illegal immigrant phantom
voters, voter ID laws sacrifice the poor, the elderly, the young, and
many minorities as collateral damage. The bill is tantamount to a
modern day "poll-tax," that forces many eligible voters to pay for a
government-issued photo ID. Furthermore, proof of citizenship often
comes in the form of a birth certificate, another document unobtainable
or even nonexistent for many people born outside of hospitals. Missouri
Secretary of State Robin Carnahan estimates that in her state alone,
some 200,000 eligible voters do not possess driver's licenses or any
similar forms of photo identification. Many senior citizens have let
their driver's licenses expire and many young people have not yet
applied for them, while poor citizens often cannot afford to drive cars
or purchase state approved IDs and passports.
Requiring photo IDs also increases confusion for election
administrators. In a hearing held by the Student Association for Voter
Empowerment (SAVE) this past July, several college students testified
about the inability to prove domicile in their college districts merely
because their photo ID was from a different part of the state or
another state entirely. Photo ID laws can therefore prevent
out-of-state college students from registering in the district where
they attend school. Were this the case ubiquitously, nearly all young
voters would be forced to vote absentee, making the registration
process more bureaucratic, time-consuming, and cumbersome.
Voter ID laws also seem paradoxical after the House and Senate
overwhelmingly reauthorized the Voting Rights Act of 1965 two summers
ago, prohibiting state and local governments from establishing laws or
policies that would have a discriminatory effect on the ability of
certain groups to vote. In a nation where voter participation is
already extremely low--48.3 percent (in average since 1945) according
to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral
Assistance‹our laws should attempt to augment turnout rather than
disenfranchise legal citizens. One could argue that voter ID laws are
more about partisan politics than cleaning up elections, as they
primarily affect demographics that suggest a particular party
affiliation.
Most disturbingly, voter ID laws hardly scratch the surface for
legitimate solutions pertaining to voter fraud. As the 2004 election
indicated, electronic voting glitches, machine malfunctioning, absence
of paper trails, excessively long lines and voter intimidation are the
actual threats to our democracy.
With that said, if there is anyone culpable of fraud, it is the
highly partisan election administrators who instate draconian
registration rules, improperly purge voting lists, unevenly distribute
voting machines and unlawfully deny provisional ballots to certain
citizens. It is imperative that our judicial system address the actual
failures in our voting systems and decide in the favor of an accessible
democracy when considering this discriminatory law.
Matthew Segal is the founding executive director of the Student
Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE) and the National Democracy
Coordinator for the Roosevelt Institution -- the nation's first student
think-tank. He can be reached at Matthew.Segal@savevoting.org
It Can Be Easier to Register to Vote
