I Guess I Can't Use This to Buy Beer, Either
David Weigel | May 2, 2006, 2:22pm
Once you've finished reading Kerry Howley's piece and have worked up a sufficient mistrust of ID laws, check out this story from Indiana. Rep. Julia Carson, a black Democrat from Indianapolis, had trouble voting in today's primaries because the state's new voter ID card law didn't recognize her congressional ID.
Carson's card does not have an expiration date as the new law requires of valid voter IDs, and Indianapolis poll workers tried to reach election officials before allowing the five-term Democratic congresswoman to cast her ballot shortly after her polling place opened at 6 a.m.
"The inspector just went ahead and made the decision that it was OK because he couldn't reach anybody to get authorization," Carson said later. And she reasoned the expiration date should not have been an issue: "It says for the 109th Congress, so that takes care of that."
Requiring photo IDs for voters is a highly contentious issue that doesn't often bubble over into the mainstream media. Mostly Republican legislators have pushed it to cut down on "voter fraud" (scare quotes because the instances of fraud don't often make sense or exist), and mostly Democratic legislators have opposed it because, well, they like to win. The former governor of Wisconsin, Scott McCallum, has repeatedly claimed that Democratic fraud stole the state from him in 2002 and from George W. Bush in 2004. You can argue that this is the Bizzaro version of Democrats claiming Diebold stole the election for Bush - but then you'd have to ask why our election system is so much faultier than our banking system, our online shopping systems, our Costco reward cards system ...
anon2 | May 2, 2006, 5:06pm | #
thoreau,
If someone asks you what color your car is, and you say "red", because you don't own a car, but you drive a red motorcycle, you may very well be telling the person the answer he wanted, which was the color of your vehicle. You're certainly not telling him the answer to the question he asked.
If you build a system that has simple rules that are easily followed, then, in general, that system will work more efficiently than if you build a system with vague rules that require interpretation by people who are not necessarily qualified to make the interpretation.
Doing things your way requires more knowledge than simply obeying the law. In this case, it requires the person to know that the 109th Congress is still in session. But it also requires the pollworker to know about every other possible way that an ID without an expiration date might be able to show that it's still current.
So if someone has a government ID that says "Good for X", the pollworker now must determine whether X is something that is sufficiently close to an expiration date that it's "good enough."
Furthermore, and this is pretty important to me, it now means that lawmakers who don't want simple equivalences applied have to come up with new, more complex ways to state things so that the implicit conversions aren't allowed. The law can no longer say "X is required" it must now say "X is required and by the way, these things which aren't X but are close are not required."
Your way of doing things requires interpretation that is bound to lead to uneven results. In this case it may not matter much, because there probably aren't a bunch of IDs that fit the characteristic of the problem one. I suspect that most government IDs that expire have an expiration date, but I can I don't know. Maybe someone has a government issued photo ID that's valid during duck hunting season. I'm sure the duck hunters know the duration of the season, but must pollworkers too?
What would have been the downside of following the letter of the law?
ChicagoTom | May 2, 2006, 6:54pm | #
Wow, maybe the govt should provide free transportation to the polls, since otherwise the poor would have to pay for gas, or bus fare, or shoes with which to walk. Any of those will cost as much as an ID card ($20 for a card valid for 8 years = $2.50/year).
Most people can walk to their local polling place for their precinct, but not necessarily to the Sec. of State.
And most get out the vote efforts do provide rides to polling places for many people.
Cry me an effin' river. If you can't be bothered to do that much, you shouldn't vote.
What hubris.
What gives you the moral auythority to judge who should and shouldn't vote? Maybe they should have literacy tests too? Or maybe IQ tests? Or mabe require HS diplomas or a GED -- I mean if you can't be bothered learn to read or to get a simple HS equivalency, then you shouldn't vote. Any more arbitrary things people should have to do before being allowed to vote??? Maybe you should have to own property too??
Voting should be as convenient as possible. You shouldn't have to be "bothered" at all. Just because obtaining an ID is trivial to you, doesn't mean that it is trivial for everyone. Stop trying to apply your personal standards to the rest of the electorate.
Nor should people be denied the vote on election day because their ID expired a couple of days ago and didn't notice. Most people don't make a habit of keeping informed of their ID expiration date, and in my state at least, we only get notifications when our license will expire -- not our IDs.
Whether they can be bothered or not isn't the point. The point is that people shouldn't have to jump through hoops to excersize their right to vote. We already have some of the lowest voter turnouts in the world, and now we add all these ID requirements -- and somehow we are to believe that this wont in fact lower voter turnout even more?
Uh-huh.
And here's the thing -- if, as was stated in the original post, voter fraud isn't really that widespread -- then why add these requirements at all? Just for the sake of adding them?? How very libertarian of you.
Could it possibly be because the people pushing these things (mostly republicans) know that the outcome is suppression of minority and low income votes and that is the actual goal??
Naw -- Im sure its just that these people want honest and fair elections -- which is why the push for verified paper trails of electronic voting -- or not
You're kidding, right, ChicagoTom? Who do you think foots the bill, one way or the other, for every single damn thing the state mandates?
No Im not kidding at all. There is no reason, considering how much we are already taxed, that the government should charge extra fees to get something they are mandating we get from the government. Part of the states budget should be used to fund free ID cards to all residents of the state (or at the very least for anyone who doesn't have a driver's license). They can charge for replacement / duplicates, but they shouldn't charge for the first one.
Furthermore, why should there be means testing for waiving ID fees? Free IDs for everyone, not just for those who "qualify for public assistance".
thoreau | May 2, 2006, 8:21pm | #
1) I have to wonder just how common voter fraud is. Note that not all election fraud is voter fraud. Election fraud could also be committed by election officials.
2) For every libertarian and conservative worried about voter fraud, there is a lefty who's worried about voter intimidation. I'm not convinced that voter intimidation is nearly as common as lefties think it is, just as I'm not convinced that voter fraud is as common as libertarians and conservatives think it is.
3) Each side of the spectrum just happens to advocate "remedies" that might have certain side effects that might, just might, give their side an advantage.
Funny that.
Obviously I agree that any act of fraud or intimidation is absolutely deplorable, yadda yadda. I just find it curious that each side of the spectrum is absolutely convinced that we must do everything possible to prevent/ameliorate the effects of these phenomena, even though they have very little in the way of numbers to buttress their concerns. (Sorry, guys, scary but unverified anecdotes don't count. That goes for joe just as much as it goes for everybody else.)
Personally, having managed a polling place (quick show of hands: How many other people here have any real experience administering an election?), I think voter fraud would be a rather time-consuming and inefficient practice compared with doing an inside job with bad equipment.
I have no principled objection to reasonable ID requirements, but I have no illusion that it will produce any great effects either. I think that putting effort into improving the rosters will have a much greater impact than tightening ID requirements. I say that from experience. Keep in mind that poorly maintained rosters not only present opportunities for people to vote in multiple precincts, they also can make it harder for eligible, responsible people to vote because some idiot downtown fucked up.
Finally, a plea to every person who intends to vote: Contact your local elections office two months before the election and verify that your name is on the roster and that your address is up to date. If there's an error, get it fixed in advance. Save yourself and the poll workers some hassle. We've cleared our calendars for the day. You haven't. We have doughnuts and bottled water with us. You don't. So do yourself a favor and make sure your record is up to date so you don't have to go through the hassle of a provisional ballot.
anon2 | May 2, 2006, 10:05pm | #
thoreau,
Perhaps you see what you want to see. There are plenty of libertarians who are concerned with voter intimidation and with election fraud. A good portion of the comments in this thread were concerning the behavior of the inspector who approved an ID that appears to not meet the requirements of the statute.
The newspaper article itself said:
Carson's card does not have an expiration date as the new law requires of valid voter IDs, and Indianapolis poll workers tried to reach election officials before allowing the five-term Democratic congresswoman to cast her ballot shortly after her polling place opened at 6 a.m.
"The inspector just went ahead and made the decision that it was OK because he couldn't reach anybody to get authorization," Carson said later. And she reasoned the expiration date should not have been an issue: "It says for the 109th Congress, so that takes care of that."
From that we can see that at least the Ken Kusmer, the reporter who wrote the article, sees that "for the 109th Congress" is not an expiration date. The article goes on to say:
People without IDs can still cast provisional ballots and have them counted later if they acquire the IDs or licenses within 10 days and present them to county clerk's office.
which means that if Rep. Julia Carson truly was at the polling place without a driver's license, she could still vote using a provisional ballot.
Let's say someone shows up and has a document that meets all the required criteria, except that instead of a traditional photo, the ID has a thumb-print on it. The potential voter says "Technically, the way the thumbprint got onto the card is a photographic process, besides you can look at my thumb and see how it matches what's on the card." I claim that the thing to do is to say "Sorry, but that doesn't meet Sec. 40.5.(2). You'll have to execute a challenged voter's affidavit, sign the poll list and vote using a provisional ballot." In fact, I think that is the procedure that should be followed in every case where someone presents a document that doesn't meet the four criteria in the law.
Does this mean I think the law itself was good? No. It just means I don't want people playing favorites. Personally, I think Rep. Carson was pulling a stunt and that she could trivially have presented a driver's license, but I am fully aware that my suspicion could be wrong. It doesn't matter; there's already a procedure in place that would have let her vote.
What would have been the downside of following the law?
The downside to
not following it is that the precinct election board is now allowed free reign in determining which, if any, of the requirements for the voting document are truly needed. Rep. Carson should have set a good example, admitted that the situation was ambiguous
at best and signed the affidavit. If she disagrees with the law, she could still use her actions to popularize the message that the law should be changed. If she believes its unconstitutional, she can still help getting it overturned. Instead, she just encouraged people to break the law.
I'm not even against civil disobedience per-se. If people really are disenfranchised, they have a right to do more than turn away meekly. But that's not what happened here, and "there is a date at which the card expires, therefore the document (card) includes an expiration date" is a dangerous game to play.
