Voter ID Supporter: We need Voter ID to prevent voter fraud.
Brawler: There's no evidence of voter fraud conspiracy in Wisconsin and of 70,000 same-day registrations studied from the 2004 election in Milwaukee, just over 100 instances were found in which someone may have voted twice, used a fake name or address or voted in the name of a dead person (assuming thse were the result of intentional fraud rather than a clerical or other error). That's a fraud rate of 0.14 percent (noted in a Michigan Law Review article by Spencer Overton).
Voter ID Supporter: What about all those felon voters, like enemy of the people Kimberly Prude?
Brawler: Voter ID would not have kept felons from voting.
Voter ID Supporter: Well, one act of voter fraud is too many.
Brawler: The best available research suggests that Voter ID would prevent far more people from voting than there are cases of actual fraud. You don't use chemo to treat a head cold. Or hypochondriac suspicions (ie, there just might be a fraud going on that we haven't found out about).
Real Life Voter ID Supporter Rick Esenberg: "Does the state have an obligation to make voting as easy as the indifferent voter wants it to be?"
Brawler: Voting is a right, not a privilege, and the state should make voting as easy as possible for people who want to vote.
Esenberg's position in his response to the Brawler's post, "Esenberg mushminded on voter fraud," brought to mind the words of voting law expert Richard Hasen in a piece he wrote advocating a federal program for universal voter registration and IDs. He was outlining reasons why Republicans might oppose it. One reason is the cost (though "freedom isn't free," right?). Another is it would take away registration powers from local electoral jurisdictions. A third reason was more attitudinal:
... At least some Republicans maintain the notion that it should not be so easy for people to vote. Under this view, registration barriers will segregate out those voters who are likely to be less intelligent or less concerned ... There is a fundamental divide over the extent to which people view electiosn as a means for choosing the "best" candidate (where we want only the most "intelligent" or "qualified" voters voting) and elections as a means of dividing power among political equals. Consider how the Texas Attorney General defended the state's onerous registration requirements back in 1971: "[T]hose who overcome the annual hurdle of registering at a time remote to the fall elections will more likely be better informed and have greater capabilities of making an intelligent choice than those who do not care enough to register.' ... As Walter Dean Burnham noted, "there always have been a substantial number of Americans who have believed that voting is not a right but a privilege for which individuals must demonstrate their worthiness."
Esenberg, in fact, evinces a bit of this attitude in the comments of the post the Brawler originally touched on:
If it means that someone has not voted because he or she can't be bothered to obtain ID, then have we really deterred voting in any way that we ought to be concerned about? Dad29 raises an interesting question. Is high turnout good in and of itself? If you won't make the effort to obtain ID to vote, will you make the effort to inform yourself about who you are voting for? And, if you won't, should the rest of us care if you stay home?
Now, there are plenty of reasons beyond sloth that could keep people who don't have a photo ID -- the vast majority of whom are elderly or poor or minority -- from obtaining one in a timely manner. But even if sloth is a factor, or indecision, or some other frailty not evident in Esenberg and Voter ID supporters, so what?
Because Esenberg's challenge, "will you make the effort to inform yourself about who you are voting for?" gave the Brawler a good laugh.
Why? Well, as discussed earlier this month at Talking Points Memo, 50 percent of respondents to a Harris Interactive poll taken on July 21, 2006 believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded.
To repeat: 50 percent of respondents to a Harris Interactive poll close to the last Congressional election believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded.
The story also noted that in a Washington Post poll taken on Sept. 6, 2003, 69 percent of respondents said it was likely that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 attacks.
Clearly, these people live in a fantasy world that bears little connection to our own. And while an aversion to evolutionary theory probably doesn't necessarily shape how you look at what's happening in the Middle East, an erroneous belief that Iraq had WMDs when the US invaded definitely does.
The Brawler assumes some of the people surveyed vote. The Brawler would bet most of those that did vote voted Republican.
Bone-deep ignorance doesn't bar people from voting. The Brawler is hard-pressed to see why failing to obtain a voter ID, for whatever reason, should either. If there was a legitimate voter fraud threat, this would be an issue worth discussing. But there's not.
The Brawler endorses the view of Spencer Overton in the previously mentioned Michigan Law Review article.
Widespread participation furthers democratic legitimacy by producing a government that reflects the will of the people and allowing diverse groups of citizens to hold government officials accountable for their decisions. Various constitutional and statutory provisions promote broad participation by eliminating voter qualifications that many believed were reasonable, such as paying a two-dollar poll tax or exhibiting an ability to read. As the U.S. Supreme Court stated, "Especially since the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights, any alleged infringement of the right of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized."
(All this said, the Brawler does regret using the word "ultramontane" in connection with Esenberg, who, the Brawler knew, is not Roman Catholic. Let's call it a flubbed joke.)
There's also a religious exercise factor: Requiring photo ID disenfranchises those whose faith forbids them from submitting to photography.
Posted by: Ben Masel | June 18, 2007 at 07:04 AM