The 'Voter Fraud' Fraud

Alexandra Walker

September 20, 2006

The most illuminating portion of an article  about Georgia’s voter ID law in today’s New York Times comes, as these things usually do, near the end. In the very last paragraph the reporter notes that two Georgia election officials she interviewed say they have never—in their entire careers—encountered a single case of voter fraud based on a person posing as someone else at the polls. Their experience reflects the national pattern: Individual voter fraud is a very minor problem. Yet to listen to the alarmist rhetoric coming from conservative Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, voter fraud is an epidemic threatening our democracy.

Today the House is expected to pass a bill that would require all voters to show a photo ID proving their citizenship to be allowed to vote in a federal election. In addition to Georgia, six other states have passed similar photo ID bills. Groups ranging from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to the National Campaign for Fair Elections are working overtime to block the federal version of this proposal because it unfairly discriminates against voters of color, rural voters, the young, homeless and transient. Click here  to learn how to voice your opposition to the H.R. 4844. [UPDATE: The House passed the bill Wednesday afternoon. Now it moves to the Senate.]

At first glance, requiring voters to present photo IDs at their polling station may not sound like an undue hardship, which is precisely what is so deceptive about the legislation. But in fact, “in the vast majority of states, drivers’ licenses do not currently require proof of citizenship and thus would not meet the ID requirements of H.R. 4844,” according to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. What this means in practice, explains LCCR, is that voters who “do not bring to the polls a photo ID that verifies their citizenship—such as a passport—could not vote .”

Bills like H.R. 4844 and the Georgia voter ID law amount to voter suppression because the voters who are the most hurt by the new requirements are low-income voters and people of color. As the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights explained in its argument against the Georgia law, what makes photo ID laws discriminatory are the following factors:

• The racially disparate impact of the economic obstacles to obtain photo identification stemming from the cost of certain documentation, including certified copies of birth certificates, as well as the cost of taking time off work and traveling to obtain photo ID.

• African-American voters rely more heavily on the use of signed and sworn voter affidavits to prove their identity (which are eliminated under S.B. 84) instead of photo identification.

The National Campaign for Fair Elections argues that requiring voter identification is “equivalent to a poll tax ”:

By mandating that voters provide identification, states are in essence mandating that these voters pay for documents to verify their identities. IDs such as drivers’ licenses, passports, and birth certificates cost money. The documents required to get those IDs also cost money. Many eligible voters cannot afford the cost of these documents. Also, many Americans can not take time during working hours to obtain the required documentation from often difficult to get to issuing agencies.

What really stings about all the resources and energy poured into these voter ID bills is that they address a nonexistent problem while the very real, well-documented flaws plaguing our broken election system are ignored.