Voter Fraud: Jim Crow in 2012

Many states require some form of identification to vote: http://www.ncsl.org/legislatures-elections/elections/voter-id-state-requirements.aspx.

At first glance, presenting a driver's license to vote might like a reasonable requirement. You have to present ID for all kinds of things, so why not voting? Also, this should prevent people who are not authorized to vote from doing so, just like it prevents people who are too young to drink from buy alcohol, right?

No. For several reasons. To wit:

First of all, buying alcohol and getting into R-rated movies are not cornerstones of modern democracy. Voting is among (or perhaps the) most important rights of an adult American citizen. Anything that makes voting even slightly more difficult for registered voters should be viewed with extreme skepticism. How many times have you or someone you know forgotten an ID at home or in another pair of jeans? Lost one? Had one expire at an inconvenient time? These things are annoying when you can't buy a six pack, but they should never prevent someone from voting.

Secondly, individual voter fraud is, from a statistical point of view, NONEXISTENT. The number of actual cases of a person who is not registered to vote doing so anyway is vanishingly, insignificantly tiny by the estimation of any reliable study or unbiased organization:

1. http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/policy_brief_on_the_truth_about_voter_fraud/
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/us/justice-dept-blocks-texas-photo-id-law.html
3. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2010/10/right-warns-of-voter-fraud-but-do-their-claims-have-merit/22519/

Even from a less rigorous viewpoint, this kind of voter fraud doesn't make any sense. An organization seeking to influence an election would have to clandestinely recruit an army of ineligible voters who support their cause, and then turn them out to the poles. It is some serious conspiracy theory nonsense to think this would even be possible without getting caught, even if ACORN or some other dastardly leftist organization was willing to carry out such an insanely stupid plan.

Last, and most important, these laws are obviously enacted in bad faith. Let's not mince words. The politicians who support these restrictions are Republicans. They know (or should know) that individual voter fraud is not a problem. But they also know that their core supporters are much less likely to be affected by these restrictions. Groups of voters who typically turn out for the Democrats, including language and racial minorities, low-income voters, and disabled voters, are disproportionately likely to be prevented from voting by these laws, according to any reasonable analysis (see the links above). The politicians who enact these policies do so not to solve an actual problem or because of honest principles. They create these restrictions in a blatant, transparent attempt to disenfranchise a percentage of their opponents and gain a political advantage.

This is not a conspiracy. The people who propose and enact these laws stand to gain from them directly. They use ungrounded fears of mass voter fraud by illegal immigrants and progressive organizations to create popular support for measures that do nothing besides help them get reelected by taking away people's voting rights.

And before you say something like "You shouldn't be allowed to vote if you can't remember your ID..." remember this: voting is a right. In a democracy, you don't get to vote only if you're smart enough or educated enough or responsible enough. Because who would be the judge of those things? The U.S. has a long and sordid history of using tests and other qualifications to prevent minority groups from voting, and these laws are just another way to accomplish the same thing. They are the cynical grandchild of Jim Crow, and they are being used to disenfranchise eligible voters in 2012.