I think Blue Neponset might have a point though. There are intermediate steps between not checking at all and requireing a type of voter ID proof that might disenfrancise a segment of the population.

I’m not totally in opposition to that concept but I can’t for the life of me understand why picture IDs are such an impossible burden. If we require registration of voters, why exactly is it impossible to link a picture ID to that process, if the citizen were not required to pay for it?

“Zero prosecutions in state history? That strikes me as powerful evidence that this isn’t really occurring at a large level.”

That strikes me as no one is checking AT ALL to see if there is fraud. Also another stat we should have, is how many voter fraud INVESTIGATIONS there have been in state history. I bet that will also be a very low number. Not a good sign.

I bet there is some voter fraud. Why exactly wouldn’t there be? People commit murders and rapes but they find some insurmoutable taboo against voter fraud? Just doesn’t make sense.

I think Blue Neponset might have a point though. There are intermediate steps between not checking at all and requireing a type of voter ID proof that might disenfrancise a segment of the population.

And really this is a lot like the debate that I took up with you a while back about your views on racism. You were asserting (correctly) that there is a tension between the desire to avoid type I vs. type II errors. But the problem I have with your arguments in both cases is that I reject the premise that we thus have to err widely on the side of one or the other (you seem to feel that we should decide that it is more important to protect the potential individual victims, while I feel it is equally important to avoid the false accusations of racism or the theoretical possibility of disenfranchisement of voters). My premise is that yes, we need to accept in both cases that we can’t possibly get it right 100% of the time, but that we should attempt to balance the degree of error on both sides of the equation rather than try to decide which side we should err on.

Here’s an example of how I think such balance could be constructed with regard to election law: require picture ID but make the state responsible for offering free IDs to those below a certain income threshhold. Give a generous time period before the law takes effect, and have vigorous requirements for ample notification prior to elections. Allow for provisional ballots for anyone lacking ID during the interim period. Meanwhile, also ensure that any and all alleged violations of the Voting Rights Act will be thoroughly investigated and that perpetrators will be severely punished.

Where’s the flaw in that? Low income citizens will actually have an added benefit of receiving a picture ID, which can be useful for other activities besides voting and for which they would otherwise have to pay.

David, I did read and I get your point but your missing mine (though I did misstate by saying this wasn’t criminal before: the real issue is that the law was not really enforceable if there wasn’t a requirement to prove identification).

Check fraud is illegal too but when banks don’t check signatures, fraud is committed. If they never checked, then one might come to the conclusion that this fraud wasn’t occurring.

One of the big successes of the Voting Rights Act was in limiting the ability of white policitians from using voter challenges to prevent minorities from voting. There is a reflexive liberal anger to anything that would allow that sort of thing to start again, especially when many of these “voter ID” things are fairly naked attempts by Republican state legislatures to reduce minority turnout.

Where are these people who were turned away from the polls? I’m a Hoosier, heard much of this group of people who would be disenfranchised, and followed the election coverage awaiting stories about individuals denied the right to vote. I have seem stories about how difficult it was to get the proper ID, but not any reflecting being turned away.

As to this post, anyone who has been heavily involved with elections knows that the stories of people being bussed around to vote, dead people voting, etc., are all very real, and not just something you read about in history class. I cannot for the life of me figure out why there are such strong objections to having to prove who you are prior to voting.

For those who were screaming a few years ago about every vote having to count, every false vote directly negates a legitimate vote.

An official photo ID is insufficient, in my opinion, to do that. But it is better than nothing.

Without some standard the dead have a certain tendency to start voting from the “other side”.

Don’t pretend that it’s never happened before and in that part of the country. Daley’s “machine”, anyone?

That’s what this is about, right? Legitimate voting?

Many states have non-photo ID requirements to vote and there hasn’t been a huge problem with people showing up at the polls with a utility bill and pretending to be someone else so they can vote. The problem being fixed just does not exist.

A more important point is that a non-photo ID requirement will prevent the same amount of in person “voter fraud” that a photo ID requiremnt will. There is no practical reason to put this kind of a burden on those without a photo ID.

You mean to tell me that no one has been convicted for a crime that hasn’t yet been criminalized? How odd! In other words, if no one has been checking ID’s, we know that no one has been fraudulently voting, how, exactly?

Meanwhile, ACORN staffers have been indicted and/or convicted in Missouri, Colorado and Wisonsin for submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registrations, and investigations are ongoing in several other states.

Why shouldn’t we devise a fair method of ID’ing voters? Anyone who cares about the integrity of the vote ought not to make this into a partisan issue: fraud AND disenfranchisement ought to be remedied, and it is possible to do a reasonable job at both.