Voter ID laws have become somewhat controversial over the last couple of decades because, for
a while, states didn't have very many of them or didn't enforce them as strictly, but nowadays
many states have enacted newer voter ID laws, many of which require photo identification,
many of which are strictly enforced.
These laws are controversial because on the one hand, proponents claim that they're needed
in order to prevent fraud.
On the other hand, opponents argue that they will keep some people from voting since a
substantial portion of the population doesn't have ID.
And weill have an especially negative effect on participation by racial minorities and
people who are poor.
Now there's been a lot of litigation about voter identification laws and whether or not
they're discriminatory and for the most part, the courts have been mixed. They look at the
particular jurisdiction, they look at the kinds of identification that are available
to voters.
They look at whether or not it's a strict or non-strict regime, whether it's a photo
or non-photo regime, and depending on the evidence, what political science there is or what the
recent electoral history is, courts have come out on both sides of the question.
Some circumstances saying that the voter identification laws aren't discriminatory, and other places say
they place too great a burden on certain populations of the public or maybe the voter public as a whole.
It's generally the more severe or strict voter identification laws that get challenged in
courts.
Those are laws likely to exclude more people;
obviously, the stricter the identification requirement, the more likely it is that some
people won't have it and, therefore, will be burdened or disabled from voting.
On the one hand, we wanna have secure elections, we wanna prevent voter fraud.
At the same time, we recognize that they can be barriers to access for those who lack an
appropriate form of identification and might be turned away from the polls on election day.
On the whole, these voter identification laws do little to burden voters and, therefore,
it's a reason why the Supreme court, in the 6-3 decision in Crawford, concluded that these
laws do pass constitutional muster.
Even if they don't explicitly prevent certain groups of people from voting, like poor people
or racial minorities or felons,
if alarm poses a significant burden on voting, the state should have to come up with a strong
justification for such a law.
States have an interest in ensuring that elections are conducted with integrity.
They wanna prevent voter fraud and they wanna make sure that the public feels confident
that when they cast a vote, their vote is meaningful and it's gonna be effectively cast
and counted at the end of the day,
The incidents of voter impersonation fraud, the only kind of fraud that a voter ID law
is really going to prevent, is vanishingly small.
If you look at where voter fraud actually occurs in real life, now, it's not common
in any form, but it most commonly occurs with absentee ballots.
A voter identification law, which requires people to present photo ID or something like
it when they go to the polls, is not gonna do anything about people submitting absentee
ballots on behalf of other people who aren't really actual people or who didn't really
vote their absentee ballots the way they've been marked.
Voter verification addresses a fairly narrow and what I think is uncommon form of
voter fraud, which is in-person voting fraud.
Somebody who shows up at the polling place saying I'm John Smith and when they're not
John Smith and trying to cast a vote on their behalf. There are greater problems when it
comes to addressing voter fraud.
One is poll worker fraud.
Poll workers who fraudulently cast ballots after the polls are closed or who destroy
or altered ballots in the counting process before they're delivered.
The best argument that I've heard is the so-called "broken windows" argument, that yeah, even if
voter ID isn't really gonna do much to prevent fraud, having a voter identification law and
tightening things up around the polling place will prevent sloppiness and some of the shady
practices that might go along with it.
The best argument in favor of a voter identification law is that it's a common-sense and simple way
of preventing voter fraud.
It might not protect all kinds of voter fraud.
It might require a little bit of a burden from voters to make sure that they have the
right forms of identification.
But so far it seems to have negligible if any impact on elections.
I think the best argument against the strictest voter ID laws is that we don't need them and
they're gonna keep at least some people from voting.
We have this idea that, I think people across the ideological spectrum in the United States
of America believe, that every eligible citizen should be able to cast their vote.
That the right to vote is really important to our democracy.
We want the appearance of fairness, and that's an important aspect of the voter identification
law, that it shows that everybody is required to show it.
Everybody has a very tangible reminder when they show up to the polling place, that there
is a, an accountability procedure that's occurring, and it helps ensure the integrity of the election process.