Midterm elections test states’ voter ID laws
Five states have passed laws requiring voters to show photo IDs to cast ballots, the result of an ongoing debate that began after the controversial 2000 presidential election. Those voter ID laws have been challenged, and in some cases overturned, and this month’s elections tested the laws of at least two states. While proponents of the laws continue to fight for their implementation, opponents claim they are an election-year attempt to disenfranchise certain groups of people.
Voter ID requirements have been debated in the states for about 20 years, says Dan Seligson, Web site editor for the Washington-based Election Reform Education Project, which provides news and analysis on election reform. Republicans say they guarantee election integrity, but Democrats say they seek to correct a non-existent problem, he says. Opponents of the laws say they restrict many segments of the population, such as the poor and elderly, from their right to vote.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) includes a provision requiring first-time voters who register by mail to present ID before voting. The act led many states to enact more strict voter ID laws with various other requirements.
The courts struck down voter ID laws in Arizona, Georgia and Missouri under the argument that they create a poll tax, Seligson says. “The argument against photo ID laws is that they put a burden on people who don’t have an ID to get one,” he says, thus creating the tax.
Only Indiana and Florida will have voter ID laws in effect for the mid-term election on Nov. 7, according to Seligson. Lawsuits that challenged the Indiana law were defeated in superior and federal courts, and a decision on the appeals is not expected before the elections, says Kristi Robertson, Indiana’s co-director of elections. Robertson says state officials will observe how the law works in November, but a formal analysis probably will be delayed until after the final court decision on the lawsuits.
The Florida law has been in effect since 1998 and has not been challenged, says Bradford County, Fla., Elections Supervisor Terry Vaughn. He says the law helps poll workers quickly verify voter addresses and signatures. “If a voter shows up without an ID, they are given a provisional ballot,” Vaughn says. “There are safeguards in place to ensure that voters are not turned away.”
The Midlothian, Va.-based American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund, which promotes ID laws, will watch the elections in Indiana, hoping that they will prove that more people will vote if they are confident about the integrity of the process, says Jason Torchinsky, a lawyer with the fund. He says he does not think that concerns that voter ID laws may restrict some registered voters from casting ballots will be validated. “I think opponents will fight voter ID laws in any form … and that it will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court,” he says.
Jonah Goldman, director of the Washington-based National Campaign for Fair Elections Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, says that voter ID laws have become a politically motivated effort to restrict the rights of certain voters. “We have to take politics out of the election process, that’s really the only way to fix it,” he says.
Right now, there is no evidence showing that the laws reduce fraud or restrict any voters, Seligson says. “Some good data gathering is needed to show which [arguments] are right,” he says.
Meredith Preston is the Washington correspondent for American City & County.