Tough ID laws could block thousands of 2012 votes
A Board of Elections volunteer watches people cast their ballots during early voting October 23, 2008 in Savannah, Georgia. An AP review of temporary ballots from Georgia and Indiana - which first adopted the most stringent Voter ID standards - found that more than 1,200 such votes were tossed during the 2008 general election. / Stephen Morton/Getty Images
(AP) - When Edward and Mary Weidenbener went to vote in Indiana's primary in May, they didn't realize that state law required them to bring government photo IDs such as a driver's license or passport.
The husband and wife, both approaching 90 years old, had to use a temporary ballot that would be verified later, even though they knew the people working the polling site that day. Unaware that Indiana law obligated them to follow up with the county election board, the Weidenbeners ultimately had their votes rejected - news to them until informed recently by an Associated Press reporter.
Edward Weidenbener, a World War II veteran who had voted for Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential contest, said he was surprised by the rules and the consequences.
"A lot of people don't have a photo ID. They'll be automatically disenfranchised," he said.
As more states put in place strict voter ID rules, an AP review of temporary ballots from Indiana and Georgia - which first adopted the most stringent standards - found that more than 1,200 such votes were tossed during the 2008 general election.
During sparsely-attended primaries this year in Georgia, Indiana and Tennessee (the states implementing the toughest laws), hundreds more ballots were blocked.
The numbers suggest that the legitimate votes rejected by the laws are far more numerous than are the cases of fraud that advocates of the rules say they are trying to prevent.
Thousands more votes could be in jeopardy for this November, when more states with larger populations are looking to have similar rules in place.
More than two dozen states have some form of ID requirement, and 11 of those passed new rules over the past two years, largely at the urging of Republicans, who say they want to prevent fraud.
Democrats and voting rights groups fear that ID laws could suppress votes among people who may not typically have a driver's license, and disproportionately affect the elderly, poor and minorities. While the number of votes is a small percentage of the overall total, they have the potential to sway a close election. (Remember that the 2000 presidential race was decided by a 537-vote margin in Florida.)
A Republican leader in Pennsylvania said recently that the state's new ID law would allow Romney to win the state over President Barack Obama.
Supporters of the laws cite anecdotal cases of fraud as a reason that states need to do more to secure elections, but fraud appears to be rare.
As part of its effort to build support for voter ID laws, the Republican National Lawyers Association last year published a report that identified some 400 election fraud prosecutions over a decade across the entire country - that's not even one per state per year.
ID laws would not have prevented many of those cases, because they involved vote-buying schemes in local elections, or people who falsified voter registrations.
Election administrators and academics who monitor the issue said in-person fraud is rare because someone would have to impersonate a registered voter and risk arrest. A 2008 Supreme Court case drew detailed briefs from the federal government, 10 states and other groups that identified only nine potential impersonation cases over the span of several years, according to a tally by the Brennan Center at New York University.
Michael Thielen, executive director of the Republican lawyers group, said its survey was not comprehensive and he believes vote fraud is a serious problem.
"Most of it goes unreported and unprosecuted," he said.
Several election administrators - even those who support ID laws as a barrier to potential fraud - said the rejected ballots in their counties appeared to be legitimate voters who simply did not fulfill their ID obligations.
Donna Sharp, the administrator of elections in Hawkins County, Tenn., said she saw no signs of fraud. Of the seven people who cast absentee ballots, six didn't come in to confirm their identity. Sharp knew one of them personally.
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It turned out that the AP had LEFT OUT significant information. Baker, for example, never said a word about whether or not these elderly voters had photo IDs. Since he makes no mention of that issue, anyone reading the story is left with the impression that they do not. It turns out that not only do the Weidenbeners both have valid Indiana driver's licenses, but they also have passports, according to the Office of the Indiana Secretary of State.
Either of those IDs is acceptable under Indiana's law. Contrary to the AP story, they told the Office of the Secretary of State that they were well aware of the voter ID requirement and had voted in prior elections in Indiana, since the voter ID became effective after showing their photo IDs at their polling place.
Although the Weidenbeners apparently forgot to bring their IDs to their polling place for the May primary, they live in a retirement community with an assisted living center, a communal dining and activity facility, and a number of detached houses for independent living. Their polling place is located within the assisted living center, adjacent to the dining room. It is so close to where they live that the Weidenbeners usually walk over to the dining room for meals. Thus, it would have been easy for them to have returned to their home to get their IDs, then gone back to their poll to vote an actual ballot. This is all information the AP could have easily found out.
Instead, however, the Wedienbeners cast a provisional ballot. Their home is only 2.24 miles from the county courthouse where they could have gone after the election to show their photo IDs so that their provisional ballots would have counted. And transportation would not have been a problem; they could get there via their own car, a city bus, or a community shuttle bus. But the Weidenbeners claim they weren't told that they needed to show an ID to officials after the election in order for their provisional ballot to be counted.
But the Indiana state form that is given to all provisional voters specifically informs them that they must appear before county election officials no later than noon on the second Friday after election day either with an ID or to sign an affidavit that they are exempt from the ID requirement because they are "indigent and unable to obtain proof of identification without the payment of a fee, or that you have a religious objection to being photographed." The AP also neglected to mention that since the Weidenbeners are over 65, they could vote by absentee ballot without an ID.
As Jerold Bonnet says, either the reporter "did not do a good job of investigating and gathering information, or he was very selective in what he chose to report." The story appeared on the eve of the trial in federal district court in Washington over the Justice Department's challenge to the Texas voter ID law. Many newspapers and media outlets all over the country picked it up, including the Austin Statesman and the Miami Herald. Bonnet notified both newspapers of the problems in the AP story. Neither ran a correction.
Baker also omitted the fact that the actual turnout results in elections in Indiana since 2006 completely contradict the false narrative that voter ID prevents anyone from voting, particularly minorities or Democrats. The turnout increased dramatically in Indiana after the ID law took effect and increased at a larger rate than many states without photo ID. In fact, Indiana had the largest increase in Democratic turnout of any state in the country in 2008, and Barack Obama won the state -- information that did not appear in the story.
Too many members of the media are promulgating a completely false narrative about a common-sense election reform that the American people overwhelmingly support. It's high time for the full story about voter ID to be accurately reported.
Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation
Since they are now concerned about voter fraud they should do the same; contact the State of Florida.
One would still need to complete a provisional ballot , their vote is counted if everything provided like name and address check out to be accurate , your new ID shows up in the mail. If you can be arrested for dancing on the subway in NYC without a photo ID or if I can stand the indignity of being asked at my doctor's office, where I have been a patient for 17 years, to bring my Health Ins. card and a picture ID , then anyone queuing up to vote should be willing to do the same. If it were up to me , and a good thing it's not , I would require a PIN number sent from the IRS upon completion of last years tax return as being required to vote. You want to vote,fine,prove who you are and cut the nonsense. As for verifying you are square with Uncle Sam on your taxes I guess that will have to wait .
Make sure you understand the real issue, please.
This supposed mandate of Voter ID is merely a guise to make those who vote accept, without question, the final results as both legitimate and valid.
If the voting machine software has been hacked into and compromised no one is prepared to address that issue? So, for you posters who are bellowing about people not being smart enough to obtain an ID, you are no smarter because while you are making sure the front door to the building is secured, the thief has sneaked around and is coming through the back.
This law is for AMERICANS and AMERICANS ONLY that is still ALIVE and not DEAD!!
It's true that, over the past two centuries, some Americans -- from EVERY party -- have been pretty creative in finding ways to steal elections. Of course, most of those stories have been embellished and mythologized over the years, and the vast majority come from an era when people voted by marking x's on their ballot. Handwritten votes were MUCH easier to steal than hanging chads.
Perhaps part of the reason Republicans are making so much fuss about voter fraud whose existence they can't demonstrate but which, they insist, requires that everyone have a state-issued photo ID card is to distract us from the fact that the CEOs of virtually all the companies that manufacture and service the voting machines our polling places use are long-time and large-scale contributors to the Republican Party. Can we trust our voting machines?
Of course there would not be even one Republicon in elected office then.
Flying, using a bank account, and using a credit card are not constitutionally protected rights. Voting is. I'm not necessarily saying I'm for or against the law, but comparing it to other activities that require ID isn't a strong point.
To vote in Mexico, for example, you need Voter ID card that has a photo, fingerprint, and a holographic image. When you go to a Mexican polling place, there's also a book that contains photos of all voters in the precinct. If there is doubt about someone's identity, workers can simply look up him up in the book to make sure his name ane photo match.
The Mexican ID card is provided free of charge, and so the states should do so here, to eliminate all of the whinging about people being 'disenfranchised' and nip lawsuits in the bud.