Thursday, April 26, 2007

Voter Id Cards

From another post:

A group of REPUBLICAN legislators has pushed legislation to require photo ids in voting (passed in the TN Senate, pending in House). This would do nothing to avoid dead voter scandals, or to provide auditable election results, but it would deny voting access to the elderly and non-drivers. I have always used my voter registration card for identification at the polls, which would be prohibited under this bill!?

Florida passed similar legislation a few years back, and Katherine Harris used it to great effect to disenfranchise voters. The result? George W. Bush. We do not need laws to get the Bushes elected while denying Democracy to the rest of us. Bad law, bad Republicans.

While I believe strongly in preserving the integrity of the ballot and think voter fraud should be vigorously prosecuted, I lean in favor of letting more people vote and reducing barriers to voting. It is democracy after all. Let the people have their say.

I believe the research shows the largest flaws in the voting process come in systemic errors that miscount votes. Estimates vary, but many experts argue that there is a 3 to 5% error rate in most election counting. (I will try to find the source for those numbers.) On the other hand, dead votes, unregistered voters and multiple votes account for less than 1% of voting totals. It takes a lot of people double voting or posing as other voters to actually cast enough votes to swing an election. An organized effort would be a huge logistical nightmare that would not easily be kept under wraps. I don’t know why Repubs are so concerned about it, haven’t they realized that Democrats are not that organized.

Let’s address the big issue of correctly counting the votes then tackle the smaller problem of who voted.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How about the disenfranchised voter that actually has a picture ID and votes legally? That vote can easily be cancelled by someone voting with someone's voter registration card only. I appreciate your optimism about human nature, but your argument is weak.