« Which Kind of Law Professor Are You? | Main | Observations on exams »
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Voter ID and Election Fraud: A Non-Fix to a Non-Problem?
Lots of people have said interesting things about the Court's upholding of the Indiana Voter ID statute, including Rick Hasen (in a 2006 piece in Slate, voter ID laws in Slate, and a more recent piece here) Vikram Amar, Dan Filler, and Edward Foley and Dan Tokaji.
My perspective comes from my experience with technology here in Tucson, and it makes me think that requiring a photo ID at the polls is almost perfectly calculated to exclude only legitimate voters, while taking care not to catch any fraudsters. Reasonably high quality fake ID's are readily available. The students in my white collar crime clinic prosecuted a man who, for $50, in a matter of minutes, with nothing but a computer, laser printer and laminator, made pretty terrible green cards for the undocumented and pretty good Arizona driver's licenses for thirsty high school kids. Any fraudulent voting operation could easily mass produce acceptable counterfeit photo ID. This guide enables bars to check the validity of ID's by identifying the characteristics of genuine documents--oops, since it is available to the general public, vote fraud folks can also make sure to use the right verification codes. They look legit. So requiring photo ID would not prevent organized vote fraud (if it in fact existed, which many commentators seem to doubt). On the other hand, actual security would be easy to achieve. Every police car in the State of Arizona can instantaneously pull up a driver's license photo on a wireless laptop--the actual photo of the licensee, so the officer cannot be fooled by a fake document. There is no reason, if it is important, that these databases cannot be made available to election workers, and every voter verified--not merely to verify that they have an ID, real or not, but that they are actually who they say they are. And of course, photos of people without driver's licenses could be added to this database, or to another one, at the time of registration. This type of system would have the virtue of actually preventing fraud. However, this type of verification system would also allow most everyone to vote, even if, when asked what kind of ID they have, they answer "nun", the poll worker would just pull up their photo. Since the states don't seem to do this, commentators may be right that there is no actual fraud problem, but that voter ID is another transaction cost designed to drive down Democratic voter turnout.
Posted by Jack Chin on May 8, 2008 at 08:50 PM in Law and Politics | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/346373/28909454
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Voter ID and Election Fraud: A Non-Fix to a Non-Problem?:
» "Voter ID and Election Fraud: A Non-Fix to a Non-Problem?" from Election Law
Jack Chin has this post at Prawfsblawg.... [Read More]
Tracked on May 9, 2008 7:13:19 PM
Comments
Jack, it seems from reading this post that your criticism of the Indiana law amounts to this: there are more efficient ways to accomplish a concededly valid state concern, i.e. fraudulent ballots. That seems like a good reason to vote against it if you're a state legislature, but where in the Constitution is it mandated that a state violates the Constitution if the legislative solution it can pass is less efficient than it might be?
Posted by: Simon | May 8, 2008 11:26:21 PM
Great idea.
That said, there's an aspect to this story that I haven't seen anyone mention. As the Washington Post reports http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/05/06/voter_id_law_consequences_mild.html?hpid=artslot :
Heretic that I am, I think that voting is usually irrational from any individual's perspective. Having an ID, however, can be useful in a wide variety of situations that have much more of an impact on one's life.
Aside from the eye-catching case of a dozen women of the cloth being turned away at the polls, it does not appear as if Indiana’s strict voter identification law, upheld by the Supreme Court last month, has caused major problems during the state’s primary today.
. . .
But there were few other such incidents reported across the state, which has one of the strictest laws in the country, requiring voters to have a photo ID issued by the state or federal government.After the Supreme Court upheld the law by a 6-3 ruling last month, there was widespread speculation that the ruling could hurt Barack Obama in the primary, since he was counting on strong turnout among African American voters in inner-city neighborhoods in Gary and Indianapolis where many residents lack driver’s licenses. But Obama spokesman Bill Burton said this evening that the campaign had received only scattered complaints on the voter hotline it set up to deal with problems at the polls. He credited the campaign’s aggressive voter outreach effort to make sure supporters had the ID they would need. (Residents without driver’s licenses can obtain free picture IDs at DMV branches.)
So here are all these folks who, up till now, haven't found the time or wherewithal to procure an ID, and for all the piteous talk about the deprivations they face, no one seems to have taken much trouble to assist them in getting an ID either. But now, with a voter ID law going into effect, suddenly there's a large nationwide organization with millions of dollars to spend (i.e., Obama's campaign) that has a keen interest in making sure that likely voters are able to get an ID.
So all’s well that ends well — political campaigns squeeze out every last vote, which is all they care about, and poor people get some help procuring an ID. Might not be the intended goal of the law, but how about it for unintended consequences?
Posted by: Stuart Buck | May 9, 2008 9:24:22 AM
