Republicans are almost frantic in trying to prove there is vast voter fraud that makes it necessary to require photo IDs to vote. But is that the main problem facing our election system?
Here's a quote from a federal government report on voter fraud and intimidation, reported in the New York Times:
There is virtually universal agreement that absentee ballot frud is the biggest problem, with vote buying and registration fraud coming after that. The vote buying often comes in the form of payment for absentee ballots, though not always. Some absentee ballot fraud is part of an organized effort; some is by individuals, who sometimes are not even aware that what they are doing is illegal. Voter registration fraud seems to take the form of people siging up with false names. Registration fraud seems to be most common where people people doing the registration were paid by the signature. <. . .> Most people believe that false registration forms have not resulted in polling place fraud, although it may create the perception that vote fraud is possible.
Yes, there are problems, says the report, but individual voter fraud is not among the important ones. There must be some reason for wanting voter IDs:
So if Voter ID won't stop what we know to be the biggest causes of vote fraud--absentee ballot shenanigans, vote buying, and bad registrations--what will it stop? Oh, that's right, minority voters:
The study, prepared by scholars at Rutgers and Ohio State Universities for the federal Election Assistance Commission, supports concerns among voting-rights advocates that blacks and Hispanics could be disproportionately affected by ID requirements. < . . I>n the states where voters were required to sign their names or present identifying documents like utility bills, blacks were 5.7 percent less likely to vote than in states where voters simply had to say their names. <. . .> Hispanics appeared to be 10 percent less likely to vote under those requirements, while the combined rate for people of all races was 2.7 percent.
A drop of 2.7% overall would have been nearly 60,000 Wisconsin voters last Novemeber--60,000 legal, legitimate votes prevented from being cast by a measure intended (though almost certainly not able) to stop 82 felons, or two double-voters, or a couple hundred bought absentee votes. Yes, every illegally cast vote cancels out a legal one. But even if voter ID would stop all the illegal votes--and it might not even stop a single one!--the balance of tens of thousands of stifled legal votes far outweighs the benefits of requiring ID. It would be "silly" not to see that.
For the links to the reports quoted above and an interesting exploration of this Republican obsession, see the April 18 post at
http://folkbum.blogspot.com/ 
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