Voter ID Laws
I wrote this before the current, post-Trump loss spate of voting laws getting enacted across many heavily-red states. I need to revisit the issue, but what appears below is essentially still my stance.
MRP, 4/22/14
Every time I vote, I am amazed and appalled at the system I encounter. I enter my polling place, walk up to the appropriate table and tell a worker my name. He or she thumbs through a hard-copy printout of the voter rolls, finds my name, and draws through it with a highlighter. Then I am told to go vote. Is there any way for the worker to know I am in fact who I claim to be? No. Is there anything to prevent my giving someone else’s name, and voting in their place? No. Is there, therefore, anything to prevent voter fraud at my polling place? No.
One thing which can be done to help lessen the potential for voter fraud is to require the presentation of some form of Government-issued identification when one shows up to vote.
Many, particularly those on the left, say that there is no demonstrated problem with voter fraud at polling places which demands this remedy. They’re right. However, should we let this current absence of scandal prevent us from taking an eminently reasonable step to strengthen the system before such a scandal arises?
Those on the left will also warn us of the potential for disparate impacts of voter ID laws on the poor, the elderly and some minority groups who, apparently, do not possess IDs to the same extent as the majority of Americans. Now, let’s not be so naïve as to deny that some on the right are trumpeting the need for voter ID laws specifically because they believe these disparate impacts are real, and will serve to tilt elections against the left.
However, this does not change the fact that voter ID laws also would go a long way to bringing greater security and reliability to our electoral process.
Here’s a solution – to mitigate any adverse impact on certain groups, any voter ID law passed should not go into effect for one year after its passage. In that time, the appropriate government body will make identification cards available to any person who does not already have some form of ID. There is no reason why individuals should not be required to pay a nominal cost for these IDs – maybe $5? $10? Now, this will throw some into fits, sending them rhetorically straight back to the days of Jim Crow and poll taxes. But, they should stop hyperventilating - it’d be a one-time cost to cover the implementation of a law which, when fully in force, will benefit all Americans. Those on the right who would complain about the travesty of a one-year delay should also stop to catch their breath - after over 225 years of elections without IDs, another year won’t crack the foundations of the Republic.
The cold logic of requiring positive voter identification at the polling place is so great as to mitigate any concerns about disparate impacts and the motivations of some of advocates. It is simply unconscionable that in the 21st century, we rely upon 18th century technology to guard our most sacred democratic instrument – the vote.