Writing a voter ID law? Better check the Constitution--and the history books--first

Should we do a better job of identifying voters in this country?  Perhaps, but if so, then we would have to deal with all of those nitty-gritty details about how to do it, and how to do it right.

First of all, this seems like a solution looking for a problem.  Cries of "voter fraud!" are dramatic and appealing, but they don't seem to be accompanied by proof of meaningful amounts of fraudulent behavior.  If such proof exists, it's apparently mighty hard to find.

There's an organization called True the Vote that has been active on this subject in some controversial ways.  So, I browsed on over to their web site, thinking that if anybody would be trumpeting some statistics on illegal voting or registration that it would be them.  Evidently, they either don't have anything like that, or they want to make it oddly difficult to find.

We dare you to learn more about voter fraud!

The web site offers a chance to "learn more" about how "True the Vote corrects the vote fraud deniers."  Making that choice presented me with a copy of a letter from their lawyer addressed to some other organization that has been criticizing them.  Well, you've probably guessed by now -- there wasn't much to be learned by reading that letter.

Delving further into True the Vote's web site--quite the intrepid investigator, aren't I?--enabled me to discover a section called "Latest News for Voter Fraud" which began by asking me if I was aware that there are "voter fraud convictions and investigations in 46 states?"  Well, no, I didn't know that, but with that enlightenment under my belt and thinking to myself "this must be where the meat is" I pursued the subject further.

Okay, now we double-dog dare you!

Sure enough, there's a list of states right there in front of me, all neatly arranged in alphabetical order and numbered from 1 to 46.  Yes, I counted them; and came up with 46.

One of the states listed was California, the most populous state in the country, and maybe it's chock full of illegal aliens all of whom are just itchin' to cast illegal ballots.  So, mumbling to myself "this is gonna hurt because they've gotta have a bunch of something from California that they want to go on and on about" I clicked on the entry for California.

On opening my eyes I found myself confronted with a single news article from a local web publication covering Escondido.  It turns out that an illegal Mexican immigrant in that municipality has recently admitted that he in fact cast a fraudulent vote in the 2008 election.  There was no mention of why he didn't trouble himself to vote in the 2010 election.

The 2010 Census counted something like 37 million people in California, and in the 2008 election the state counted more than 13 million votes.  Congratulations to True the Vote -- you've managed to find somebody's news article about one out of 13 million votes.

Their evidence about naughty voting is no more impressive for Ohio--less so, in fact--but they are still looking.    

See, for example, the recent article by the Los Angeles Times on related efforts in Ohio which have largely backfired.  Towards the end of the article is this statement by the Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted:  "When you cry wolf, and there's no wolf," he said, "you undermine your credibility, and you have unjustly inconvenienced a legally registered voter, and that can border on voter intimidation."  Nicely said, Mr. Husted, although it might also be true that such a border was crossed.

Where's the evidence of widespread voter fraud in this country?  Beats me.

If it's a good idea, it deserves to be well-handled

Which isn't to say that having a better and more positive way of identifying voters is a bad idea.  Maybe it's a good idea.  Seems like it's worth thinking about.

So far, though, any legislation and actions that states have taken in this regard have been very flawed.  It's all been based on photo identification -- what it is, how to get it if you don't already have it, and how it is used.

There are a couple of obvious problems with photo identification for voters, not that the flurry of legislation this year has given any thought to them.  To begin with, how do you keep photo ID's current with a person's changing appearance?  Appearances can change for a variety of reasons; age comes to mind as one, or am I the only person who has noticed my changing visage due to a receding hairline?  And it also seems like there would have to be ways of mediating disputes about the validity of photo identification, whether it is in-person or in some way connected with the ever more popular practice of vote-by-mail.

Anyway, instead of confronting practical issues that are presented by helpful citizens such as yours truly, some state legislatures are burdening us with faulty new laws on the subject.

Texas, for example, with a Republican-dominated Legislature, passed legislation that required voters to obtain their ID's by making a personal visit to a state office, branches of which are spread around that geographically-expansive domain.  However, about a third of the counties don't have any of those offices, and where there are offices they keep them open for--at best--normal business hours.  Whatever that might be in a state that prides itself on frugal state business operations.

Fortunately, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and a Federal Court have put the kibosh on the legislation.

6 August, 1965 - Pres. Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr. at signing of Voting Rights Act

                                                      

In Pennsylvania, the Republican-majority Legislature enacted voter ID legislation that would require a person to present four forms of other identification first, one of which would have to be the individual's birth certificate.  And there would be a charge of about $20 or so for obtaining the birth certificate.  That's equivalent to a poll tax, and so another kibosh is applied.

It seems as if there might be job openings for constitutional lawyers in a couple of state legislatures.

By the way, this is the Pennsylvania legislation which, when passed, caused the leader of the legislature's Republican representatives to gleefully exclaim that they had just passed a law that would ensure the state's electoral votes go to the Republican presidential candidate this election year.  Judge for yourself what that man's motivation might have been in supporting the legislation.

Get trusted the old-fashioned way -- earn it

The states cannot be trusted on this subject.  The Fifteenth (1870) and Nineteenth (1920) Amendments to the Constitution are there for this reason, as is the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  They couldn't be trusted in the 19th Century; they couldn't be trusted in the 20th Century; and they cannot be trusted now in the 21st Century.  Some of them are regressing.

Which isn't to say that improving voter identification is a bad idea.  There's no obvious reason to fret about it and rush into it by enacting faulty legislation.  But if it is found to be a good idea, then it needs to be done at a Federal level, because there's a whole lot of history telling us that it cannot be done in the right way at the state level.