Let me know what you think
Presumed Problem
People who are not eligible to vote are casting votes by pretending to be people who are eligible.
Solution
Require all voters to present specified photo identification at the polling place.
Narrative
“This simple action … will appropriately help maintain the integrity and fairness of our electoral systemhere in the Lone Star State,”
then-Governor Rick Perry said at the signing ceremony. The law requires voters to present a state or federal photo identification, like a driver’s license, military ID card, passport, 
concealed handgun license or a voter card provided by the state. It does not include student IDs as a valid form of photo identification. It also requires voters who were forced to cast a provisional ballot to produce a valid piece of identification within six days of the election in which they hope to vote.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the first Voter ID law was passed in South Carolina in 1950. It was another 20 years before Hawaii enacted a similar law, and the practice grew from there. At this writing, some 37 states have such laws, varying in requirements, but all requiring some form of identification to be presented at polling places.
In April, 2012, Fox News reported a poll in which, “Overall, 70 percent of Americans say voter ID laws are needed to stop illegal voting.” They noted more Republicans (87%) supported voter ID laws than Democrats, but even a majority of the latter (52%) agreed. Obviously, concern for fair and honest elections is not a trivial matter.
Was the Problem Real?
There have been a number of studies seeking to estimate the extent of this problem. Recently Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor specializing in elections, took on the task of identifying “credible allegations” of in-person voter fraud in the USA between 2000 and 2014. He was careful to point out that he was not limiting the search to convictions or even indictments, but he included any allegation of fraud that he judged reasonably likely to have occurred. In that 15-year period, he identified 31 credible allegations—out of around one billion ballots cast. He judged that these 31 cases would have been prevented by Vote ID laws.
In another study, Brad Friedman reported 10 cases of in-person voter fraud since 2000. The website voterfraudfacts.com provides a context for judging the size of the problem. Examining government crime statistics, they contrasted the 9 possible cases of voter impersonation between 2002 and 2005 with 352 cases of death due to lightning and 32,299 reports of UFO sightings.
News21 did an independent assessment of voter fraud, sending “thousands of requests to election officers” and they, also, concluded that while election fraud might be a problem, in-person fraud was rare.
“The fraud that matters is the fraud that is organized. That’s why voter impersonation is practically non-existent because it is difficult to do and it is difficult to pull people into conspiracies to do it,” said Lorraine Minnite, professor of public policy and administration at Rutgers University.
In short, in-person voter frauds to be the smallest crime category in America. It is hardly worth any effort to prevent it–and “solutions” to this mini-problem causes huge problems of its own.
It could be argued, in fact, that the drive to implement Voter ID Laws is a fraud in and of itself, that it is intended to suppress the voting by specific
demographic groups, such as minorities. In 2015, in Alabama, for example, a Voter ID Law was introduced and citizens were assured they could easily obtain an official ID at an
y Department of Motor Vehicle office. Shortly thereafter, the Republican governor announced plans to shut down all the DMV offices in eight of ten counties with predominantly African American residents–known as Alabama’s Black Belt–also known for a strong tendency to vote Democratic. The governor rescinded his plan in response to strong negative publicity.
In Pennsylvania, with a Voter ID Law instituted prior to the 2012 Presidential Election, a Republican Party official proclaimed that the new law would guarantee a Pennsylvania victory for Republican candidate Mitt Romney.By the same token, Wisconsin Congressman Glenn Gotham, a Ted Cruz supporter in the 2016 presidential race, said:
I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever put up. And now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well…
You don’t need to be cynical to suspect that honest elections have not been the real reason for Voter ID Laws. Rather than eliminating fraud, the Voter ID Laws are an example of election fraud.
Negative Consequences
Where a driver’s license would suffice, non-drivers are disadvantaged. If a concealed weapons permit would qualify people to vote, those not packing heat are at a disadvantage. Where voters must obtain the necessary ID from a state office, it is likely that elderly, poor, disabled, and rural citizens will have special difficulties getting to the designated office within official hours of operation. Whatever the nature of the requirements, it is easy to see that some eligible voters will experience more of a hardship than others. When Pennsylvania passed their 2012 Voter ID law, the Pennsylvania Secretary of Commonwealth estimated that some three-quarters of a million eligible voters lacked the required identification.
A judge blocked enforcement of Pennsylvania’s Voter ID law just prior to the 2012 election but not before the state had mailed 758,000 letters to eligible voters, warning that they lacked the necessary identification to vote. Despite the judge’s action, a post-election study by the AFL-CIO 
concluded that 35,000 eligible voters were deterred from voting by the warning anyway. They were convinced they would be turned away from the polls.
Looking at the issue more broadly, the Brennan Center for Justice concluded: “Studies show that as many as 11 percent of eligible voters do not have government-issued photo ID. That percentage is even higher for seniors, people of color, people with disabilities, low-income voters, and students. Many citizens find it hard to get government photo IDs, because the underlying documentation like birth certificates (the ID one often needs to get a government ID) is often difficult or expensive to come by.”
The difficulties in complying with state’s Voter ID laws have often produced dramatic stories. Consider the 90-year-old Texan, who had let 
his driver’s license lapse and found his identification card as a Texas Christian University faculty member would no longer legitimize him as a legal citizen-voter in the Lone Star state. Ironically, the suspicious would-be voter was Jim Wright, who served 34 years as a U. S. Congressman from Texas, and from 1987 to 1989, was the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Still, you can’t be too careful.
The negative side-effects of Voter ID requirements not only weigh on the voting public, however. Such laws can be very expensive for the jurisdictions requiring such identification.
When Georgia enacted its Voter ID in 2005, they initially required voters to pay a fee for the government ID, but that was thrown out by the courts as constituting a poll tax. The consequence of that ruling was that the state 
would have to bear the cost of providing the IDs without charge. Other states have experienced similar costs.
Karen Shanton and Wendy Underhill report that between 2007 and 2010, Indiana spent over $10 million on the production of the free Voter ID
cards. In 2010 alone, Indiana spent $600,000 on voter education and outreach to insure that voters understood the new requirements.
There is more fraud in absentee ballots and voter registration than any other categories. The analysis shows 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud 
Ironically, then, Voter ID laws may cause more people to seek absentee ballots—which makes cheating much easier. Imagine if you and I went to a polling place, and I explained to the poll workers that you had paid for the privilege of casting my ballot. Chances are, I’d still be in jail. On the other hand, there would be nothing
to stop me from selling you my blank absentee ballot. Or you could hold a gun to my head while dictating how I should vote—a practice frowned on in most polling places. Or maybe you are just voting the way someone tells you to.
The various studies of in-person voter fraud indicate two things. First, we will never know the exact number of times it occurs, due to differences in definitions and data collection methods. Second, however you measure it, in-person voter fraud is a minuscule problem. Voter ID laws represent a clear case of a solution without a problem. It is a “solution” with disastrous consequences, moreover. It is a source of real problems rather than the solution to a make-believe problem. There should be no more phony “solutions” and we should undo the existing ones.
© Earl Babbie 2016, all rights reserved Terms of Service/Privacy
Sources
Artwork from ShutterStock
Samantha Lachman, “Four Years Later, Texas Is Still Defending Its Voter ID Law,” Huffington Post, April 24, 2015 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/24/texas-voter-identification_n_7129502.html accessed July22, 2015
National Conference of Legislatures, 2014, “History of Voter ID,” 10/16/2014, accessed 4/14/2015 at http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-id-history.aspx
Dana Blanton, “Fox News Poll: Most think voter ID laws are necessary,” April 18, 2012, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/04/18/fox-news-poll-most-think-voter-id-laws-are-necessary/ accessed July 18, 2015
PR Newswire, “Department of State and PennDOT Confirm Most Registered Voters Have Photo ID, http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/department-of-state-and-penndot-confirm-most-registered-voters-have-photo-id-161244395.html accessed July 22, 2015
Saki Knafo, 2013, “Pennsylvania Voter ID Confusion Disenfranchised Over 35,000, AFL-CIO Report Finds,” Huffington Post, July 30, 2013, accessed April 18, 2015 at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/30/pennsylvania-voter-id-confusion_n_3676911.html
Brennan Center for Justice, 2012, “Voter ID,” October 15, 2012, accessed April 16, 2015 at http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/voter-id
Heavy Mettle, “90 Year Old Legendary Speaker of the House Jim Wright Denied Texas Voter ID Card,” DailyKos, November 3, 2013 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/03/1252733/-90-Year-Old-Legendary-Speaker-of-the-House-Jim-Wright-Denied-Texas-Voter-ID-Card accessed July 27, 2015.
Justin Levitt, 2014, “A comprehensive investigation of voter impersonation finds 31 credible incidents out of one billion ballots cast,” Washington Post, August 6, 2014, accessed 4/14/15 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/
Brad Friedman, 2012, “New Nationwide Study of Election Fraud Since 2000 Finds Just 10 Cases of In-Person Voter Fraud,” 8/19/2012, accessed 4/14/2015 at http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/10981-new-nationwide-study-of-election-fraud-since-2000-finds-just-10-cases-of-in-person-voter-fraud
voterfraud.com, 2015, “Get the Facts on Voter Fraud in the United States,” accessed April 27, 2015, at http://voterfraudfacts.com.
MSNBC, ” House Republican accidentally tells the truth about voter ID,” April 6, 2016 — accessed at http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/house-republican-accidentally-tells-the-truth-about-voter-id