Voting Reform and the Evil ID Card

WaPo again making or passing on the ludicrous notion that having to have an ID card to vote is discrimatory.

The problem recommendation -- which drew a dissent from three of the 20 commission members, including former senator Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) -- would require voters to present a government photo identification at the polls. This may not sound particularly burdensome in an age when, as the commission noted, such IDs "are needed to board a plane, enter federal buildings, and cash a check." Yet 12 percent of the voting-age population does not have a driver's license, and those without identification tend disproportionately to be minorities, the elderly and the poor. To its credit, the commission urges states to ensure that such IDs are "easily available and issued free of charge." But for those who don't already have identification, the hurdle of assembling the necessary documentation and obtaining the cards could prove a deterrent to voting.

If they are too lazy to get the ID, then I'd say it's likely they are too lazy to vote. The rest of the population had to get sufficient documentation together to get their driver's license and then had to register to vote on top of that. How is this a deterrent, when they would have to do what the rest of the voting population has already done?

Indeed, election administrators agree that absentee ballots pose a bigger risk of fraud, and in that case the commission would guard against fraud by having election officials match a signature on file. As commission member Spencer Overton, an election law expert at George Washington University, asks, why wouldn't the same be sufficient for those who turn up at the polls without ID? Allowing voters to show alternative forms of identification or to sign a sworn affidavit of eligibility could go a significant way toward deterring fraud without imposing the burden of an inflexible photo ID requirement.

If absentee ballots are such a large risk, do something to fix it. Making the system looser doesn't solve the problem of fraud. As for alternate IDs, sure, why not. As long as they meet a predefined criteria of having a name, address, and photo I think they should be allowed. Military ID's are accepted, passports are accepted, I see no reason why local authorities can't have a list of alternates.

Sworn affidavit? Yeah, there is a secure manner to prevent fraud. How about that affidavit and require a photo be attached of the person that swore it out. Oh, wait, that would probably be inflexible and a deterrent as well.

I'm not saying that there wouldn't be false IDs created, but a bar code or magnetic strip on the card certainly would make it so that they can at least be verified as legitimate. You could even take the relevant data and hash the ID with the person's SSN to make it less prone to simple falsification. (It wouldn't eliminate false IDs, but it certainly would make them less likely to be made inexpensively and frequently.)

Blessed Brighid, Jemma is on board with the use of the IDs. How can you argue with that?

"The American people are losing confidence in the system, and they want electoral reform," Mr. Carter said in a statement.

These are the main recommendations:

¶States, not local jurisdictions, should be in charge of voter registration, and state registration lists should be interconnected so voters could be purged automatically from the rolls in one state when they registered in another.

¶Voters should be required to present photo ID cards at the polls, and states should provide free cards to voters without driver's licenses.

¶States should make registration and voting more convenient with innovations like mobile registration vans and voting by mail and on the Internet.

¶Electronic voting machines should make paper copies for auditing.

¶In presidential election years, after the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries, the other states should hold regional primaries and caucuses at monthly intervals in March, April, May and June, with the order rotated.

They're railing against a sodding ID card and they have no issue with the voting by mail/Internet suggestion? After all the whining about the risks of voting with various types of machines, you'd think this would be a no go.

Schneier has a blog entry on the Georgian version of this. (Which from what I have read is flawed in that it does require the person to pay for the ID. That is a poll tax as far as I'm concerned.) It is interesting to read through the comments. One comment that slapped me in the face was this:

Could we outsource identification to Blockbuster Video? People don't seem mind proving who they are when they rent a $2 DVD. If they believe voting is more important than that a photo ID shouldn't be an issue.

Rather inciteful that. And a perfect argument on why the voter's ID is a valid recommendation.

If the ID card is such a concern for security, I'd say that many of the other suggestions have worse security flaws. The state maintained voter list could be hacked and altered, the voting machines could be hacked, Internet voting could be set up to strategically alter vote counts. There are methods to make them all secure, they just will never be 100% fool proof. That is asking more than the fates would allow.

The EPIC comments pointed to in Schneier's blog are interesting to look at. Though I would say that some of their assumptions are rot.

As EPIC has previously explained in the analogous context of voter registration, voter registration was designed to deny suffrage to those groups that were deemed not to be worthy of equal participation in the democratic process. From generation to generation the list of the outcasts of American Democracy included women, new citizens, minorities, young adults, first time voters, poor people and immigrants.

Registration in itself is not what limited the vote. It was the requirements or qualifications for registration that did. Poll taxes, proof of literacy, proof of land ownership, proof of race, have all been used. Registration today merely requires proof of residency. I suppose this does limit one's ability to vote, but only by limiting a person to vote where they live and then only once.

Then there is this:

GeorgiaÂ’s Secretary of State Cathy Cox in letter on April 8, 2005 stated her opposition to the proposed changes in voting identification requirements. The state currently has several measures in place to detect voter fraud of the kind alluded to during the debate over passage of the legislation. To date there is no evidence of fraud having been detected and thus no justification for the restriction of voter identification to only certain state and federal issued identification documents. The nature of voter identity fraud would yield complaints from voters who when attempting to vote in that state would have found that someone had voted in their name. In addition this factor not being present to indicate a need for the change in identification requirements. It should also be noted that Georgia has "“severe criminal sanctions"” for the type of fraud suggested by the passage of the new identification requirements. Further, the application of the new voter identification requirement to absentee voting is courteous. Especially in light of the numerous cases of voter fraud related to the casting of absentee ballots that have been noted by the State Board of Election.

I love that part I highlighted in green. Isn't that the old "more laws will decrease crime" concept? Where have we heard that used before? Think hard. [Think gun control.]

I've also seen statements that this is to fix a problem that doesn't exist. I'd say that is a willingly blind assumption. There isn't a huge amount of real data on voter fraud, but there is some. The present system is so freely open to fraud that actually compiling data on the levels of abuse is unlikely to occur. Partisan politics won't help in documenting the issue either.

This really is a valid point. Too bad that people would rather live with fraud or the chance of fraud, rather than have all voters do a little work for that vote.