I've been following the recent push, by state and federal legislatures, for the mandatory presentation of photo ID in order to vote with both political and personal curiosity (since, as an election supervisor, changes to the voting process will affect me directly). My strong support for
the suffrage process should come as no surprise (I volunteer for insane, high-stress hours in order to make sure people can vote, after all), and even beyond the
right to vote it's the
spirit of voting, and the democratic principles of equality that draw no distinctions based on affluence or education or race or gender or beliefs, that I admire. The voting booth doesn't care about your annual income, your education, your long term goals, your disabilities, your orientation or your skin color, and in that regard has far fewer prejudices than any human. It is for these reasons that I take the voting process, and more particularly any attempt to pluck it away from its rightful owners, very seriously.
The controversy over photo ID began in a handful of states and has progressed to the U.S. Congress, where, on party line votes, bills to require photo ID by 2008 and official voting identification by 2010 have passed. Several of the state versions, however, have already been invalidated or put on hold by courts, and it seems likely a similar challenge will be mounted against the federal version. All parties involved seem remarkably shortsighted on this issue, carrying with them a distinctly unpalatable partisan flavor.
The Republicans have characterized their push on this issue as a way to crack down on voting by illegal immigrants, with grandiose speeches about protecting the validity of each individual's vote and the "common sense" aspects of needing photo ID for everything from flying on a plane to renting videos (neither of which, of course, are enshrined in the Constitution). In this regard, they've formulated a solution for a problem that, frankly, doesn't (yet) seem to exist. I could find no numbers relating to voter fraud by illegal immigrants, beyond isolated single elections, despite a half-hour of Googling. If anything, the apocryphal accounts (one in particular from a Utah investigation) show thousands and tens of thousands of illegal immigrants applying for driver's licenses and only scant dozens or hundreds registering to vote (even when registering is as easy as checking a box on the license form), and even fewer (very small percentages) actually voting. I'm taking these with a grain of salt, given that I could find no hard statistics either way, but I find some wisdom in the concept that the average
legal voter can't be bothered to vote, and illegal immigrants have no real incentive in risking discovery by trying to participate in a government process. I don't put it past Democratic activists to try to mobilize illegal immigrants in especially contested races (and frown at them with as much disapproval as is reserved for their Republican counterparts), but as of yet massive nationwide voter fraud requiring photo IDs hasn't been documented. Quite frankly, there are easier ways to commit voter fraud (
serious flaws in
electronic voting seem a
far easier-to-exploit option than recruiting illegal immigrants).
This isn't to say photo IDs aren't a good idea, and on this I take the Democrats to task again. Even if the actual threat hasn't manifested, the
potential for voter fraud is real and should be examined. I am not opposed to photo IDs . . . if done correctly, on a reasonable timetable, with no disenfranchisement. On this point, however, it is the Republicans who fail. Their solutions have been simply to require photo IDs, leading to multiple court invalidations on the grounds that photo IDs are not free, in terms of both money and time, and thus requiring them to vote constitutes a form of a poll tax, something
prohibited by the U.S. Constitution (and expanded by the Supreme Court to cover the payment of
any fee as a requirement to voting - "Voter qualifications have no relation to wealth."). In other words, the courts have found that the Constitutional right of a citizen to vote cannot be impeded by requiring the citizen to spend money in order to qualify to vote. This seems inconsequential to many people, as a photo ID can be had for $20 or less from the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Supreme Court's interpretation of the 24th and 14th Amendments, however, is clear that
any required fee will not survive a legal challenge.
The simple solution, then, seems to be to make the IDs free. At this point we enter a land of shades of grey. Opponents of the plans (including me) point out that even excluding monetary costs, requiring IDs creates barriers; the hassle of finding the proper documentation (I have no idea where my birth certificate is - I hope my mom has it), the hassle of going to the DMV (not a trivial matter when we're talking about people who don't already have driver's licenses), the hassle of spending hours going through the process and the hassle of doing it all over if the DMV rejects the application. These are not openly covered by the Constitution or the Supreme Court's rulings, but I would suggest that they violate the
spirit of voting, if not the law itself, as they present a barrier that isn't applied equally, a barrier that falls to the citizen to overcome.
The major political conflict arises from the fact that the groups most likely to be affected by these barriers are also groups who predominately vote Democratic: minorities, legal immigrants, the poor and the elderly. Thus, it favors Republican interests to require photo IDs, as even a few thousand people who are discouraged by the barriers can sway an election. The innocent protestations of Republican leaders that their intent is pure rings hollow when it is pointed out that they are not requiring similar measures to protect voting by mail (a far easier target for voting fraud), a process that does not favor either party.
Less-than-honorable tactics for influencing elections are by no means limited to Republicans, but neither can it be said that Republicans are shining examples of protecting voting rights for all people.
The solution to this seems painfully obvious, if the Republicans are serious about their claimed motivations (to protect the voting process and not simply hinder their Democratic rivals), especially given the low-priority of the threat: a nationwide program to ensure equal registration and availability to all citizens, a deferment of the photo ID requirement until such a program is satisfactorily completed and provisions for similar ID requirements for voting by mail. By all means, set a deadline, but make sure
individual citizens are not disenfranchised along the way.
Labels: elections, politics
Posted at 7:06:00 PM. |
| Permalink
to this post.
