Poll: 7 in 10 support photo id to vote

Posted at 2:20 PM on July 7, 2006 by Tom Scheck (4 Comments)

Rasmussen Reports came out with a poll saying 77% of those polled agree that states should require a photo id to vote. 7 states, including Georgia, passed laws requiring the photo id to vote. Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, a Republican, supports the photo id requirement. The measure also passed the Republican controlled Minnesota House. It failed in the Minnesota Senate. Supporters of photo id say they're concerned about voter fraud. Critics call the measure voter supression and will challenge the measure in the courts.

I didn't really study the polls methodology and know some have concerns about Rasmussen. Nevertheless, it's an interesting topic to discuss over the weekend.

What do you think?

(We have to approve posted comments because of those nasty spammers so don't get frustrated if your post doesn't appear right away. I'll check my e-mail regularly over the weekend to approve them).

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Comments (4)

Could you explain the comment re: Rasmussen's methodology? They were the most accurate polling firm in the 2004 election cycle.

I've not heard any concerns about their methodology but am open to persuasion.

Posted by Gary M. Miller | July 7, 2006 4:30 PM

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To be clear, I haven't checked the methodology of this particular poll. I don't know anything on their polling in particular except that some blogs have questioned their polls in the past. I'm not saying if the poll is good or not. I'm really not an expert on those matters...

Posted by tom scheck | July 7, 2006 5:00 PM

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Although I'm a lawyer, I'm far from being a voting rights expert. Still, this raises important constitutional issues. The 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution says no state may deny or abridge the right to vote, the 19th Amendment says women get to vote [duh], the 24th Amendment prohibits poll taxes in elections for federal office, and the 26th Amendment says 18 year olds get to vote.

Four concerns: (1) ID cards are ridiculously easy to fake. Ask any college freshman. (2) Photo ID usually are synonymous with driver's licenses. Poor people are less likely to drive. Hence, fewer poor people vote, which violates the 14th and 15th Amendments. (3) Are the IDs free? If not, this sounds like a poll tax under the 24th Amendment. (4) For religious reasons, some women do not reveal their faces for photographs. Conditioning their right to vote on doing so violates the 19th Amendment, as well as the First Amendment.

Posted by Steven P. Aggergaard | July 8, 2006 8:12 AM

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I'm not a lawyer either, but Mr. Aggergaard is making pretty good arguments in my book.

As a candidate for office, I'm not saying anything bad about Kiffmeyer until my ballot petition has been certified. I will say that requiring a photo ID card could not possibly drive up participation and that I am extremely proud of our nation leading turnout, election after election.

I will also say that in Florida and Ohio, the problem was not that people were voting more often than they were allowed. The problem was that people who were legally entitled to vote were barred from doing so. Ohio is easy to explain - they just didn't put enough voting machines on college campuses and in other Democratic strongholds. Florida was more sophistocated.

Besides the indecipherable ballots and the checkbox "I certify I am mentally competent to vote", they systematically suppressed the minority vote by purging the voting rolls of anyone who had four matching attributes to a felon - year of birth, first name, last name, race.

Since they don't have same day registration in that state, many people were unaware of the state's "mistake" until it was too late to do anything about it. Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" is a great book on this topic.

Posted by Justin | July 9, 2006 6:42 PM

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