by Nina Totenberg - NPR - January 9, 2008
Morning Edition, January 9, 2008 · Politics is front and center at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, as the justices examine the constitutionality of laws requiring voters to show a government-issued photo ID in order to cast a ballot. Although 24 states have enacted such laws in recent years, Democrats contend that they suppress voter turnout.
Since the fateful 2000 election, Republicans in many states have pushed for voter ID laws to stave off what they see as a major problem: voter fraud through voter impersonation at the polls. But studies have shown the problem does not exist.
Tova Wang, a Democracy Fellow at The Century Foundation, co-authored research and filed a federally mandated report on the question.
"We found that although there is fraud in the system, it doesn't take place at the polling place," Wang says.
Royal Masset, a consultant who by his own estimate has been involved in some 5,000 Republican campaigns in Texas, agrees.
"My experience is that in-person voter fraud is nonexistent," he says. "It doesn't happen, and if you really analyze it, it makes no sense because who's going to take the risk of going to jail on something so blatant that maybe changes one vote?"
Voter fraud does exist, say the experts, but in more systematic ways, through ballot box stuffing, voter machine manipulation, registration list manipulation and absentee balloting.
Documents Required to Vote
Still, 24 states have passed some sort of voter ID law. Indiana's is the strictest: It requires anyone voting in person to present a current government photo ID.
If you don't have one, you can vote provisionally at the polls, but you must present the required ID at an appropriate government office within 10 days or your vote will not be counted. People who don't have IDs can get them free from the state, but they must have appropriate documents, such as a certified birth certificate, and other secondary proof.
The Democratic Party and the American Civil Liberties Union went to court seeking to block the law, noting that there is not a single recorded case of voter-impersonation fraud in Indiana's history. A federal appeals court acknowledged that the law poses a heavier burden on groups that tend to vote Democratic — minorities, the poor and the elderly. But, the court said, the burden is slight.
'A Preventative Approach'
In the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Indiana will argue that the law is necessary to promote public confidence in the system.
"There is concern about fraud in the future, so it's a preventative approach that hopefully can maintain the integrity of the voting process," Indiana Attorney General Steven Carter says.
Countering that argument will be lawyer Paul Smith.
"Under the Supreme Court's doctrine, the fundamental right to vote is protected from laws which look like legitimate regulations but don't actually serve any purpose while imposing significant burdens," Smith says.
The devil, Smith contends, is in the details of Indiana's law. He cites, for example, the case of a woman who made three trips to the motor vehicle bureau in a vain attempt to get a free voter ID card. Her problem, even after she obtained her birth certificate, was that it was not in her married name. While the state does provide free voter ID cards, Smith observes, voters incur considerable costs in time and money to secure the documents the state requires as a condition for getting the cards.
'I Should Be Able to Have a Voice'
The League of Women Voters has filed a brief with concrete examples. One of those examples is the case of Kim Tillman of Indianapolis, a stay-at-home wife of a janitor and mother of seven children ages 1 to 11. In order to get the free voter ID card, she had to get her birth certificate from out of state, a process that she said would have cost as much as $50. And that was money she needed for household bills. Not being able to vote, she says, made her feel like she wasn't a citizen.
"I believe that I should be able to have a voice ... to say who I would like governing the state that I live in," Tillman says. "But unfortunately because of the state laws I'm unable to do that."
The state contends that Tillman could have voted if she had gone to the state offices within the 29 days before an election and sworn out an affidavit saying she is indigent, a process she would have to repeat before each election. There is no indigency affidavit provided on Election Day at the polls.
In the most recent mayoral election in Indianapolis, the city documented 34 cases of voters who had voted repeatedly and consistently in past years and whose signatures matched their registrations, but who had to cast provisional votes because they did not have the proper ID. Only two of those 34 voters went back within the required 10-day period after the election with the appropriate ID so their votes would be counted.
Carter, the state attorney general, notes that 34 voters out of 160,000 isn't that many.
"So those who didn't have the proper photo identification was really a miniscule number in this urban county," Carter says.
Voting rights lawyers counter that there were likely many more who just turned around and went home instead of taking the time to vote provisionally. In any event, they contend, even 34 votes, when duplicated in other locations throughout the state, can add up to hundreds, even thousands of votes that could decide a closely contested election.
Continued on NPR
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