Commentary
Voter ID controversy offers a lesson in independent thinking
By Kat Katoski
Kat Katoski is a graduate student in the Masters of Political Advocacy and Leadership Program at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
I made a mistake. But let's start at the beginning.
I would categorize myself as your typical progressive — tax the rich, feed the poor and take care of the environment before it's too late. So when a recent school assignment required me to write an opinion piece on the proposed Minnesota voter ID amendment, the obvious first step was to learn what Democrats were saying because I would agree.
Democrats were against voter ID. Simple enough.
Read: Frequently Asked Questions about Voter ID
Something else you should know about me — I enjoy challenges. I decided it would be a hoot to write from a Republican standpoint. I knew my classmates would be writing from a liberal perspective, so I figured I'd spice things up a bit.
Researching voter ID from a conservative perspective was all new to me. I doubted I would find even one argument that could hold up against the barrage of attacks Democrats were using against voter ID.
For example, Republicans were claiming that a photo ID requirement was necessary because of a significant threat of voter fraud. They're wrong. Minnesota's electoral process has been tested several times recently, in those delightful recounts. Out of nearly 3 million ballots cast in 2008, the fraud rate was .0009, resulting from felons' voting — an offense that a photo ID requirement would not prevent.
Another common conservative contention was more basic: Nowadays you need a photo ID for everything, so why not show one at the polls? But it turns out that not everyone has one. Approximately 40,000 Minnesotans currently lack a government-issued photo ID.
Then I discovered something I did not expect. The voter ID amendment includes funding to provide free state-issued identification cards to those 40,000 people.
And soon I found more. Indiana recently enacted a voter ID requirement, which was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court, and witnessed record-breaking voter participation in its 2008 election.
One more thing about me — I love the show "Cops." While I was writing my opinion piece for school, a rerun happened to be playing in the background. The cameras followed as a policeman pulled over a woman doing 49 in a 30. The lady went berserk. Handing over her license and registration was the last thing she wanted to do. There was paper-tossing and cursing galore. But despite the theatrical performance, the woman realized that in order to continue on her way she would have to hand over her ID.
In that moment I concluded that even a self-proclaimed Democrat like me must, at the very least, consider voting yes to the voter ID amendment.
I had made a mistake. I was careless with my political beliefs. I'd come to rely on a disturbingly polarized system to form my opinions for me. This amendment gave me a greater understanding of identification than I could have ever imagined.
Truth be told, I'm still not sure which way I'll vote if the question makes it onto the ballot this November. But I can guarantee that I will never again let my political affiliation dictate my opinion without first taking a good, open-minded look at what both sides are saying.
Comments (14)
Opponents of voter-ID laws can overstate their case, and are often too quick to accuse their opponents of bigotry. But the unwillingness of supporters of these laws to grapple with their effects is equally troubling. Either they will disenfranchise precisely those voters that were statutorily disenfranchised for centuries, or they will cost states enormous amounts of money (ie, from providing free voter-ID cards, from making them easily obtainable, from education/outreach to explain changes to the law, etc). Now, it could be that supporters believe that the marginal protection against certain forms of extremely rare voter fraud is worth the burden on state budgets and the risk of turning away eligible voters. But that is not an argument we have yet heard.
I am so encouraged to read this article! Way to think for yourself, Kat! I think you missed several key points, but if you keep digging, you'll find them and no doubt be supporting Voter ID 100%. It's certainly not a political thing!
I was an election judge 2 years ago, and was amazed at the outright activism going on. Not what you'd think, though. People from all sides were taking out their licenses and showing them to me. At first I said "oh, I don't need to see that" but after several "but you should! It's not right that we..." I realized what was going on - by my estimates about 80% of voters that night were willing to take the extra step of "speaking up" for Voter ID, because they don't want THEIR vote watered down. Ineligible felons and non-citizens are voting, and people are voting multiple times. Voter ID will stop that nearly all the time and it's time to get it going!
I don't believe the fraud rate will go to zero. 0.0009 is pretty low. What is the opportunity cost of voter ID? How much money will it cost the state? how about we just give that money to education instead?
Kat:
There's no such thing as a "free ID."
People have to spend their precious time and money to obtain it--whether it be a tank of gas to drive to the DMV or a bus ticket.
Lots of folks don't have the convenience of being able to stand in line at the DMV for over 2 hours to get an ID, as many people work for a living. They cannot take time off from their job, or studies, to obtain an ID. And THEN - you have to wait 3-4 weeks to actually RECEIVE the ID, it's not like they provide it on the same day.
Imagine if even one person was to lose their wallet the day before the election. That would be one person not able to vote, and one person too many.
Let's stop falling for these voter ID schenanigans. It's all a plot by the Koch Brothers and the richest 1% to alter the outcome of our elections. It's happening all over the country with GOP Govs and legislatures.
Throughout America's history, we've always moved toward the direction of inclusion, not exclusion from the polls.
It's wrong to deny Minnesotans their constitutional right to vote. Democrats will fight--and WIN--to make sure voting stays a right not a privilege.
Kat:
I'm afraid of voter impersonation. It sounds too easy to pull off, for those who apply themselves.
I looked at the report you linked about the fraud rate, but do not believe it can accurately rate voter impersonation. It gives a rate based on investigations, and assumes that anyone not investigated was innocent.
I'd say that we don't need to ID for things like posting opinions on websites (does anyone care about fraud here?), but voting is serious and should be taken seriously.
When I was in college, I moved a lot. I moved from home to campus, from campus off campus for the summer, and then back in the fall. In all, I would guess I moved at least dozen times over those four years. If I went to the DMV and got a new license EVERY TIME I moved, I would have spent more than $200 just so that I could vote. Not many college kids are going to pay that much to vote. If we are going to make it this difficult for college kids to vote, all in the sake of preventing 0.0009 percent fraud, lets have an honest discussion about raising the voting age to 22. And while we are at it, lets cap it at 75, as those who no longer drive have a hard time driving to the DMV to get a free ID.
My wife has been out of work for a year now. My house is worth less than I owe on it. The streets in my neighborhood are crumbling. I honestly think that if preventing 0.0009 percent of people from voting fraudulently is on any policy makers top 100 list of priorities, then they deserve to be unemployed like my wife, so they can see what real problems truly are.
As I read this, I found myself thinking back to an evening I spent helping at the homeless shelter at our Minneapolis church. That night there was a married couple, white, with two teenage daughters staying with us; they had one car, the man had two jobs requiring that car, and the three women were ragging on him mercilessly because that very day they'd missed a required in-person appointment to lease an apartment because they had no way to get there. Those of us who are privileged tend to not notice the huge problems other may have with things we think should be no big deal.
Kat,
You need to do more research. Voter ID laws are not innocuous. In the context of state photo identification requirements, 25% of African Americans and 16% of Latinos do not possess valid photo ID. By comparison, only 8% of whites are without a current government-issued photo ID.
These new laws prohibit many common forms of previously acceptable identification like student IDs, social security cards, utility bills, and bank statements. Remarkably, although Texas will not accept a state-issued student ID for voting, it will accept a concealed handgun permit...
Requiring proof of citizenship is another favorite tactic: Individuals born on reservations, or outside a hospital, for example, may never have been issued official birth documents, or original documents may have been destroyed over the years.
A replacement birth certificate costs $20, a passport costs $110, and replacement naturalization documents cost $345. Sounds suspiciously like a poll tax to me....
In the spirit of Dr. King, I say, it's time to march...inform yourself about restrictive voting laws or proposals that have been adopted or are being considered in your state, how they may affect you, and how to overcome them.
Requiring ID to vote might seem like a great idea. Until you get disenfranchised! And maybe that won't happen if you happen to live in the same place your entire life. But if you should study abroad for a semester, or go on missionary duty to a foreign country, or be deployed with the military, your status could change. And if you should become Mrs. Hagglund and move to Mr. Hagglund's address, and not have your ID updated by election day, you might find yourself unable to vote with Mr Hagglund at his poling place. How fun would that be?
Since you enjoy challenges Ms. Katoski, I challenge you to study the voter ID issue not by watching the TV show "Cops" about people breaking laws and being confronted by law enforcement, but by visiting a Minnesota nursing home at election time. Maybe you could even assist the residents in helping them to fill out their absentee voting forms. It might give you an impression of people in your community that no longer have current state issued IDs and the challenges they might face in obtaining one with their mobility challenged by their wheelchairs and their oxygen tanks.
But hey! It's more fun to do research by watching TV than having to go out and actually do something, is't it?
Kat,
Who are the .0009 % that the amendment wants to prevent from voting...and why? Felons? There are a couple states that allow convicts to vote from prison. Illegal aliens? I'm sure they are just clamoring to the polls to prove to someone they are here illegally. Having to show ID from breaking the law is a whole different issue than having to show it for a constitutional right.
Kat,
Your comment about voter turnout increasing due to photo id at the polls is a classic case of confusing correlation with causation. How many people do you know who said "I'm not going to vote until they ID me?" You forget that 2008 saw record turnout everywhere, because people were excited about finally being done with G.W. Bush.
Another thing you never considered is that it takes a photo ID to get the copy of a birth certificate or a marriage license necessary to get a taxpayer funded ID.
You also need to realize that no one in this state has ever gone to polls to find someone has voted for them. Also, felons have IDs, so the claim that this will stop them from voting is ludacris. Photo ID at the polls didn't stop the Indiana Secretary of State from commiting voter fraud by registering and voting someplace he didn't live.
You need to dig a little further and ask yourself "Do we need to spend money to prevent a crime that nobody has committed and risk infringing on tens of thousands of civil rights? How many people is it okay to disenfranchise in order to stop something nobody has seen?"
The Department of Homeland Security has estimated that the Real ID act, which will apply new requirements for production of documents and DMV verification of those documents to all renewals of and new applications for drivers licences, will cost 'individuals' over $5.8 Billion in out of pocket expenses and time required to comply. That's not including any normal license fee (that might be waived by these "show your papers to vote" laws.)
In arriving at that figure, DOHS assumed that 25% of current holders of drivers licenses would give up and not bother to apply. (In part assuming that there might be alternate types of licenses or procedures to apply. Anyone heard of any state appropriating money for two different types of drivers licenses or two different processes to get one?)
According to the final rule adopted in the summer of 2011, that federal law goes into effect January 2013 and yet it is almost never brought up in dicussions of the Photo ID law.
Wonder why.
We can see the camel's nose, but should we be concerned that there might be a camel attached.
http://www.ncsl.org/Portals/1/documents/statefed/RealIDFinalReg.pdf
The US Supreme Court decision upholding the Indiana "show me your papers" law rested largely on two elements:
1. The small segment of the voting-eligible population that would be burdened.
2. The relatively small burden imposed to get a license or ID under that Indiana law.
Neither will apply to any similar law once the Real ID act goes into effect.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-21.ZS.html
And if the sensitivity to "burden" applied by SCOTUS to corporate '$peech' (as applied in its "Citizen United" decision) had been applied to Indiana citizens required to show their 'papers' in order to vote, their decision would have been different even without the additional weight and breadth of the burden added by the Real ID act.
How many married women have gone to the trouble of obtaining Social Security cards with their current legal name?
The time, effort and cost to do so will constitute just one of the new barriers they will need to overcome to renew their drivers license under the federal Real ID act (without which, their right to vote will be taken away.)
I admire Kat's willingness to dig past the talking points, but in this case, she should have kept digging until she got to the truth.
The League of Women Voters (LWV) did some research on the proposed voter ID, and saw that about 11 percent of Americans would not be able to vote under its restrictions. That percentage jumps to 18 percent for young people and seniors, and more yet for Latinos, while some quarter of African Americans would be unable to vote. The presenter for the LWV characterized the proposal as "voter suppression", a strong term from an unbiased group like LWV.
More damning in my opinion is its origin in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group of wealthy individuals and businesses interested in gaining further power in the land of the "free". They have the Supreme Court on their side with the Citizens United rule on corporations as persons with rights of free speech. Next agenda item: restricting the vote among middle income groups and minorities. Who needs the freedom to be suppressed?
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