Stymied by vigorous public opposition and political headaches on some of their most radical and openly controversial legislative goals, Republican governors and lawmakers across the country are moving quickly to pass bills that could have a much more important effect on the country’s political dynamics its ultimate ideological path.
Legislation to force state residents to provide official photo identification in order to vote is popping up in fully half of the states, according to the AP. And there appears to be little standing in the way of most of them adopting strict new regulations on voting rights.
The GOP’ insists that “voter fraud” is rampant across America, with conservative activists constantly railing against the threat of illegal votes cast by minorities or other groups not typically associated with voting for Republican candidates. But the data rarely back up these claims, and actual voter fraud is actually incredibly rare in most states.
Emboldened by vast gains in state legislature and governorships, Republicans are pressing ahead with the most aggressive push to reform voting laws and add new qualifications to the process of casting a ballot since Jim Crow and the days before the Voting Rights Act in the segregated South.
Where state residents used to be allowed to show such items as bills or bank statements to get a ballot, now they will be forced to show photo identification such as a driver’s license or official state ID.
As the AP article notes, the rush to pass strict voter ID legislation has opened deep racial wounds in North Carolina. The state ‘s Republican legislature is considering a voter photo ID law that is opposed by the Tar Heel State’s black and student communities.
Memories of poll taxes and “literacy tests” are still vivid for the state’s large African-American population, the demographic that would be affected by the new rules most significantly.
In the South, the issue comes with a burden of history for black residents who recall past barriers to voting such as violence, literacy tests and other methods. The Voting Rights Act still requires a number of Southern states to get Justice Department approval of redistricting efforts to ensure that minorities’ voting strength is upheld.
William Barber, president of North Carolina’s chapter of the NAACP, said the photo ID measure amounts to “nothing but nuanced, 21st Century Jim Crow.”
Henry Frye recalled the literacy test he failed in 1956, after he’d returned from serving in the Air Force and tried to register to vote. One of the questions asked him to name a U.S. president — the 13th, if he remembers correctly.
Frye, who eventually became North Carolina’s first black Supreme Court justice, spent 14 years as a lawmaker in the General Assembly and focused much of his time trying to make it easier for people to register and vote. He said the photo ID measure appears to be a first step back in the wrong direction.
“I think we need to do what we can to encourage voting rather than discourage voting,” Frye said.
Elections officials in North Carolina said most of the voting fraud allegations they investigate turn out to be unfounded. Over the past five years, the state has referred about 350 cases to district attorneys for investigation, mostly in cases of felons who cast a ballot without first getting their voting rights restored. There are more than six million registered voters in the state.
States already have ways to check the identity of voters when they register and when they go to cast a ballot. North Carolina’s current law requires residents to provide documents proving their name and address in order to register to vote. Those who register improperly can be charged with a felony.
At the polls, North Carolina voters must declare their valid name and address in order to get their ballot. Impersonating another registered voter is also a felony, as is voting more than once in an election.
While measures to restrict collective bargaining or slash the pensions of state employees have faced vigorous public opposition and have proven unpopular with many voters, the idea of passing laws mandating voter photo ID at the polls has become an easy fall-back for conservative lawmakers precisely because it lacks inherent controversy for most of the public. The most recent poll shows over 80 percent of Americans approve of checking for photo identification at voting locations.
But these laws are not without significant costs, both financially and in the infringement of basic rights and citizen involvement in the democratic process. Many of the states with voter photo identification legislation pending or approved have large minority or student populations, raising concerns about intent and widening the likely impact on residents.
Every photo ID measure being considered or already approved could cost up to millions of dollars to enforce and potentially disenfranchise millions of voters.
- In Ohio, that state’s proposed photo ID law for voters could impact as many as 900,000 low-income, minority, student, and elderly residents. This is the number of people that lack the kind of photo identification that the Republican legislature would mandate in order to cast a ballot. Democrats call the proposal a modern-day “poll tax.”
- Texas had the lowest turnout of any state in thew 2010 elections at 32 percent, but a new law that passed the Texas House would make it even tougher to be able to cast a ballot. Despite only one case of voter fraud since 2002, Republicans in the legislature approved a restrictive new photo ID law that would even ban student ID’s as a legal form of identification at the polls. Incidentally, gun licenses would be permitted as valid ID under the bill.
- Minnesota’s proposed photo identification legislation could cost the state nearly $90 million in implementing the measure and enforcing the restrictions on identification.
- The rush to mandate photo ID at voting locations has hit Alabama, where the Republican state legislature is advancing a measure that would cost at least $250,000 and force every voter to provide photo ID at the polls. The State Senate’s GOP majority leader said this about the bill: “This is something we needed to do a long time ago; I think it is great.”
The GOP can’t win in a fair race, so they have to stack the deck, one way or the other. they have eliminated ACORN that helped register low-income and shut-ins, so by making registration progressively more difficult – the GOP feels that not only gerrymandering districts but lower Democratic registration will make them win 2012.
You know, there’s a proven form of fraud out there that’s costing Uncle Sam tens (if not hundreds) of billions of dollars every year. It’s called tax evasion, and exclusively occurs w/the uber rich, who park their money in the Caribbean and/or in Switzerland… Why hasn’t the GOP/TP addressed this blatant form of deception/fraud? I mean, aren’t they the party of fiscal responsibility?
I know, ACORN and other Democrat shadow organizations get cut off at the knees when, in order to register a meaningful number of fraudulent voters, they would have to figure out a way to match them up with photo IDs. Why, it would hardly be worth it!! You’d have to be a particularly unproductive low-life with no civic motivation to be unwilling to posess a photo ID…
Good point, “atl”, I suggest we start with Timothy Geithner.*
*(I’ll help you out here, since you probably don’t know who he is. He’s a Democrat, cheated on his U.S. taxes multiple times when he was a prominent member of the World Bank. He just didn’t pay them! Even though the World Bank notifies each member in writing on a periodic basis that they are indeed responsible for paying the appropriate taxes in their home country. World Bank doesn’t collect taxes, their employees come from all over.
Timothy Geithner is Secretary of the Treasury, a Cabinet level official responsible for, among other things, running the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.)
Republicans wonder why some accuse them of racism. When you re-enact laws that were enacted to keep freed slaves from voting I think it’s hard for people to see you as anything other than racist.
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