What's the BIG HOOPLA on VOTER ID? Military Families this is good to know...

CHECK OUT THIS STORY THAT I READ from Southern Studies, on voter ID..

Well let me say this being a Carolina GAL you have to get smart on voting laws and how this COULD possibly affect you. Up to 12% of U.S. citizens don't have the kind of government-issued photo ID that most voter ID laws require. Even if state Republicans are able to muster the votes needed to override the governor's veto, voter ID would still face another obstacle: a newly-emboldened Department of Justice, which has successfully tied up a similar measure in South Carolina on the grounds that it may unfairly impact African-American and Latino voters.


In 2010 the midterm victories, Republican lawmakers across the country (NOT just in NC but across the Nation) pledged to push for strict laws requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. Voter ID laws were the first to be pre-filed by GOP legislators in Texas and South Carolina, and others states will likely follow suit.

With the struggling economy still the number one issue on most people's minds, why the fixation on voter ID?  The reasons have to do more with politics than any real threat facing the integrity of elections. First, pushing for voter ID gives Republicans a reason to talk about the alleged crisis of widespread voter fraud. It's all like a SMOKE SCREEN (POOF let's talk about this and get everyone all distracted, and ignore the REAL reason), the economy, or jobs or issues at hand.

There's little evidence such fraud actually exists: A five-year investigation by President Bush's Department of Justice earlier this decade famously netted only 86 convictions out of thousands of cases. But since the 1960s, the mere accusation of fraud has been effective in rallying GOP voters.

Yet the prospect of a voter ID law should give little comfort to even the most die-hard believer in the anti-voter fraud crusade. As Adam Skaggs of the Brennan Center, a non-profit legal advocacy center, noted in testimony to the Texas legislature in 2009, voter ID laws only address one type -- and one type alone -- of alleged fraud: in-person impersonation of another registered voter.

All the other types of fraud -- people voting twice, Mickey Mouse trying to register, non-citizens voting, irregular absentee ballots -- would be completely unaffected by a voter ID law. And there's no evidence that in-person voter impersonation is a widespread problem.

In 2007, North Carolina's Republican state auditor similarly claimed to have found evidence of thousands of such suspicious voter records, which were publicized on the eve of the legislature's vote on a voter registration bill. When the state board of elections issued a 10-page rejoinder questioning the report's methodology and findings, the auditor retracted his concerns.

There may be little evidence that voter ID laws solve any real election problems. But they may bring a heavy cost: lower voter participation. Up to 12% of U.S. citizens don't have the kind of government-issued photo ID that most voter ID laws require.

At least three studies (here, here and here) have concluded that voter ID laws, by throwing up an extra barrier to casting a ballot, lower voter turnout. One study found no effect; zero studies have shown a positive effect on voting.

Comments

  1. seems to me as if this article is missing a lot of information and skewing things a tad bit. :(

    ReplyDelete

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