Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Voter ID: two views of fraud
A presentation by the League of Women Voters St. Peter Chapter on problems with Minnesota's Voter ID amendment drew cheers from the downtown Kiwanis Club at its Monday meeting.
Mostly because of the argument that there is very little voter impersonation fraud that has ever been uncovered and the amendment therefore is an unnecessary infringement on voting rights.
North Mankato City Council candidate and budget watchdog Kim Spears brings this story to my attention: "Maryland democratic congressional candidate drops out of race after allegations she voted in two states."
Officials of the Maryland Democratic party asked candidate Wendy Rosen to withdraw from the race after they investigated themselves the allegations of voting fraud and were confident they were true.
So we find ourselves with two points of view on the idea of the Voter ID amendment.
The St. Peter LWV outlined in a leaflet that it opposes the Photo ID/Elections Amendment.
Spokeswomen Lynn Solo and Helen Baumgartner made the case, and they emphasized their presentation was intended to be factual not political.
They lay out in a kind of flow chart the amendment language, then the language in the statute and then raise questions about the questions left unanswered by the language.
Essentially, the league's position is that the change in voting laws sought by the amendment will be "extreme and unnecessary changes" that it will "create hurdles" to voting for absentee and military voters, that it will be "harder for seniors to vote," and end "election day registration as we know it."
They say it's another "unfunded government mandate" and will create a new system of provisional balloting that increases property taxes and other vital services as a result will be cut.
Spears says the Maryland case is "an interesting situation bearing on the upcoming ballot initiative."
Certainly, the Maryland case will be a high profile kind of media-attention getting case that will focus on the issue of voter fraud and impersonation, though the Washington Post said it was unclear if state Voter ID laws would prevent this kind of multi-state voter fraud.
I also don't consider the Downtown Kiwanis Club a bastion of liberalism, so the applause for the LWV was a bit surprising.
The Free Press has written two editorials on the Voter ID amendment, basically arguing there are a lot of questions and how they are answered could very well cost taxpayers more money to solve a problem that may not be as big as we think.
It all comes down to how one wants to solve problems in an imperfect voting system. Budget hawks should of course be willing to apply a strict cost/benefit analysis, the cost being the expenses associated with photo IDs and the benefits being the prevention of fraud. But there also may be a cost in preventing legitimate people from voting.
I will say this: If the amendment passes and it becomes law eventually, there will be plenty of stories on how legitimate citizens were denied their right to vote through some government snafu.
Those stories will be rampant because almost every news organization in the country is going to find one or two cases - easily - with the way this will be set up.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The "kind of flow chart" described in this post is presumably this one on the web site of the League of Women Voters of Minnesota: http://www.lwvmn.org/document.doc?id=508
ReplyDeleteThe claim from Spears that the Maryland/Florida case has "bearing on the upcoming ballot initiative" is worth probing. I'm glad, Joe, that you reported what the Washington Post had to say about the relevance of state voter ID laws. But you could go further and analyze how this case fits in with the proposed Minnesota amendment that Spears is mentioning.
ReplyDeleteFrom the fact that Rosen's alleged double voting came to light from examining the Maryland and Florida voting records, we can see that she must have voted under her own name in both places. As such, establishing her identity was not at issue. Rather, it was her eligibility that was at issue, just as with the Minnesota felons. In her case, the eligibility standard in question was residence. In one of the states (I gather Florida), she is alleged to have voted without being a resident. Note that voting somewhere you don't reside is forbidden whether or not you vote anywhere else. (For a prominent example, see Charlie White of Indiana.)
The proposed Minnesota amendment says remarkably little about eligibility verification, given that this has been the trouble spot. All it says is that all voters must be subject to substantially equivalent eligibility verification. This seems to be aimed at Election Day registration, which is irrelevant to the Rosen case, since it exists in neither Maryland nor Florida. The proposed Minnesota amendment does not require that residence be verified by any means not currently in use. (In fact, it does not even require that current means of residence verification be retained.) News reports indicate that Rosen owned property in Florida. Presumably this would render a Postal Verification Card deliverable and would provide her with a utility bill in her name.