Saturday, January 05, 2008
Editorial: Expect voter ID to be an issue, alas
The state's Republican lawmakers are ready again to take on the elusive voter fraud problem, but what of the evident issues damaging Virginia?
From the RoundTable blog
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Republican state Sen. Mark Obenshain will be taking over as the Virginia Senate's minority whip when the General Assembly convenes next week. One of his legislative priorities, he tells his hometown newspaper in Harrisonburg, will be requiring voters in state elections to produce identification. Ho-hum.
This tired GOP saw, based on fears rather than evidence of widespread voter fraud, is hardly worth a mention in a state with so many real problems to address.
Granted, Obenshain is proposing nothing so onerous as Indiana's requirement for a government-issued photo ID that bears an expiration date. Virginia voters, by contrast, currently must produce some form of ID -- even a utility bill with a person's name and address will do -- or sign an affidavit swearing they are who they claim to be.
Obenshain wants to do away with the affidavit and require people "to show a scintilla of evidence to show they are who they say they are" when they turn up at the polls.
That sounds reasonable enough -- and far preferable to a House voter ID bill proposed by Republican Del. Bob Marshall. He would change Virginia's law to mirror Indiana's, which is being challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court as an unconstitutional effort to discourage voting among certain segments of the citizenry -- such as black and elderly and low-income Americans. Not coincidentally, these segments tend to vote Democratic.
Obenshain cites a new study by a professor at the University of Missouri's Truman School of Public Affairs to discount any partisan motivation in the GOP's interest in voter ID laws. Jeffrey Milyo analyzed the impact of Indiana's law on voter turnout and found it to be negligible.
His findings run contrary to research by the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, which reported in November that the Indiana law disproportionately affects the state's "minority, low-income, less-educated, and young and old residents," who simply do not have valid photo IDs in proportion to their numbers.
Getting one can be a significant barrier for someone who lacks the mobility of, say, more privileged policymakers.
Whether the barrier is high enough to violate people's constitutional rights is a question the high court will settle. The legislative energy behind it, though, is based on speculation about a problem that might exist rather than evidence that it does exist.
The effort would be better spent on issues causing the state real damage -- its antiquated tax structure, unworkable political divisions, widening economic gaps. Little things like that.
