"Voter ID Is the Real Fraud"

[applegrove]

Voter ID Is the Real Fraud

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/30/opinion/voter-id-is-the-real-fraud.html?smid=tw-share

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On the other hand, the judge found that 300,000 Wisconsin voters, or 9 percent of all registered voters, lack the required ID — more than twice the margin of victory in the most recent election for governor. “A substantial number” of those voters, the judge found, are lower-income and poorly educated residents who face a “unique barrier” to getting the underlying documents needed to obtain a photo ID. Some cannot afford the $20 for a birth certificate; others must spend weeks tracking down documents at government agencies inaccessible by public transportation.

In the end, it was easy for Judge Adelman to find the law unconstitutional under the equal protection clause. “It is absolutely clear,” the judge concluded, that the law “will prevent more legitimate votes from being cast than fraudulent votes.”

Equally important, the judge found that the law also violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits laws that have a disproportionate impact on minority voters. That’s because those voters are more likely to be poor and undereducated, the judge found, which “is traceable to the effects of discrimination in areas such as education, employment, and housing.”

Until now, Section 2 has been used primarily in redistricting lawsuits, but its application in the voter-ID context gives a potent weapon to challengers of similar laws in Texas and North Carolina. When the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s ID law in 2008, it found no evidence of actual harm to voters. The Wisconsin ruling is important in part because it shows the power of the testimony of real, everyday people whose right to vote is demonstrably burdened by these laws.



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[Cha]

1. No shite!

mahalo apple~

[Gothmog]

2. The only purpose served by voter id laws is to steal the vote from poor people

The type of voter fraud stopped by these laws does not exist

[Gothmog]

3. The opinion in the Wisconsin case is very strong. Here is a good article on this opinion

The judge in the Wisconsin case wrote a great opinion that will be used in the Texas and North Carolina cases. Here is a good article on this opinion http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/04/wisconsin_s_voter_id_decision_judge_lynn_adelman_destroys_the_conservative.html

Judge Adelman agrees, and supports his stance with a treasure trove of evidence. Citing research on the incidence of in-person voter fraud in American elections, Adelman notes that, in eight years of Wisconsin elections—2004, 2008, 2010, and 2012—researchers could identify only “one case of voter-impersonation fraud.” And in that case, it was a man who “applied for and cast his recently deceased wife’s absentee ballot.” Likewise, after “comparing a database of deceased registered voters to a database of persons who had cast ballots in a recent election,” in Georgia, another researcher found “no evidence of ballots being illegally cast in the name of deceased voters.”

Adelman even notes the sheer difficulty of committing in-person voter fraud, throwing water on the claim that this could ever be common. “To commit voter-impersonation fraud,” he says, “a person would need to know the name of another person who is registered at a particular polling place, know the address of that person, know that the person has not yet voted, and also know that no one at the polls will realize that the impersonator is not the individual being impersonated.” He ends with a note that sounds like sarcasm, “Given that a person would have to be insane to commit voter-impersonation fraud, [the law] cannot be deemed a reasonable response to a potential problem.”

He also makes a key point about public perception: Insofar that anyone believes that in-person voter fraud is a problem, it’s because elected officials—almost all of them Republican—treat it as such, as they push for these laws. Put simply, voter impersonation is a fake problem that doesn’t need a solution.