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Just Who Gains From Voter ID Laws?

Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger

It seems that almost everywhere you look, some State is trying to reduce the number of early voting days, purging the voting rolls and making it harder for citizens to cast their votes.  The State of Florida has recently attempted to remove legitimate voters off its voter rolls and the State of Georgia recently attempted to restrict the time when a military absentee ballot can be counted as I wrote about earlier on this blog. Georgia  Now, we have some hard evidence of just who is getting removed or impacted by the various State’s attempts to cure the imagined Voter fraud problem!

“Their data suggests that beyond the wide variation in purge rates across states, there is significant variation within states:

In many states, certain parts of the state electorate, both geographically and demographically, are much more likely to be dropped off of the voter rolls than others. More specifically, some general trends that we see are focused on:
a. Urbanity – cities are getting disproportionately purged
b. Race – minorities are getting disproportionately purged
c. Marital Status – unmarried people are getting disproportionately purged
d. Age – younger (< 40 years old) and older (> 65 years old) voters are purged more frequently than middle-aged voters
e. County effects – there are big differences across county lines, pointing to sharp discontinuities based on arbitrary political boundaries that do not correspond with inherent behavioral differences

Catalist notes that more than 2.7 million living people who voted in 2008 have since been purged from the voter rolls. Among those, African American voters are “1.5 times more likely to be purged than Caucasian voters, nationally.” ‘ Think Progress

It appears from the data above that Minorities are the big “winners” when it comes to the voter purge gambit. The young and the old seem to be the runners-up in the race to see which demographic gets the worst of the attempts to prevent legal voters from being able to vote.  What could be behind this attempt to prevent minorities and the young and those older than 65 from voting?  It couldn’t be politics, could it??!

What are these States afraid of?  It cannot be voter fraud since the actual number of voter fraud incidents is infinitesimal.  “In fact there were only nine instances of possible in-person voter fraud between 2000 and 2007, and it is more likely that an individual will get struck by lightning than they will commit voter fraud. In the lawsuit brought by the ACLU against Pennsylvania’s voter ID law, the state formally acknowledged that no in-person voter fraud has occurred in Pennsylvania and they don’t expect any to occur in November.”  Think Progress

Let see if I understand this.  One side is claiming that voter purges and stricter voter ID laws are needed to prevent or stop a problem that at least in the case of the State of Pennsylvania, was not a problem in the past or likely in the future.

If there is no legitimate voter fraud problem now or in the near past, should these voter purges and voter ID laws be considered Voter Fraud?  If so, why and if not, why not?

Additional sources:  The Brennan Center

180 thoughts on “Just Who Gains From Voter ID Laws?”

  4. Swarthmore mom,

    If you mean Words With Friends, I play, too. Friend me on Facebook and challenge me if you’d like a game… (goes for anyone else, too) 😉

    Oops, gotta go, my brother George just played a word…

  5. There is on line scrabble on facebook, Blouise. I play a lot but it currently is not loading.

  6. When raff checks in I’m afeared he won’t be too happy with what we’ve done to his thread.

    Perhaps it is time to put on a cloak.

  7. lotta,

    lol … great pic

    Is there on-line scrabble? It’d be fun to get together and have a few games.

  11. Gene jumps and jiggles jarring jovial jousters just joining in jest.

    or one of my diction exercises which I looked up so that I could copy and paste rather than type.

    Theophilus Thistle, the successful thistle sifter, in sifting a sieve full of un-sifted thistles, thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb.

  13. lotta,

    I remember that and haven’t thought about it for years. There was a hotly debated phrase, “rise above your handlers” that was included.

    It really was unprecedented for the two parties to get together like that and demand concessions from the League that they knew would never be accepted. The League went for substance but Bush and Dukakis only wanted show.

    Do you remember Bernard Shaw, the moderator of the debate, asking Dukakis, “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”

    Can you imagine the League ever allowing such a question that injects a purely irrelevant emotional element into the discussion of a policy issue?

    So who ran the debates then and since? Well, the Commission on Presidential Debates and if anybody wants to read about that sterling group:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Presidential_Debates

    I need a drink!

    1. bLouise languishes last, losing leadership laurel. Lottakatz laments league’s lambasting lesser luminaries.

  16. Blouise, I knew the Presidential debates were no more than propaganda and entertainment in ’88 when LWV refused to sponsor the debate that year. I haven’t taken them seriously or watched them since then. I was one of those people that thought that LWV didn’t generally ask questions that were ‘hard’ enough (mainly that there wasn’t enough follow-up when an intriguing answer was forthcoming) but as a structured forum was done well and was informative. Now? The debates are controlled by the parties through a commission, yea, I’m going to have faith that the debates are disinterested and informative or even minimally fair. Right. 🙂

    I had to look up the following statement to post it but I recall that when I first read it my reaction was that my real life had enough farce in it- I didn’t need to watch more of it from politicians. 🙂

    The statement that the League put out says it all and is darned impressive:

    “The League of Women Voters is withdrawing sponsorship of the presidential debates…because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates’ organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.”

  17. Bron,
    I have a better idea. Stop removing legal voters from the rolls and stop making it more difficult and more expensive to vote. If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

  18. Slarti’s slippery slope serpentines southward subtly smashing straitlaced stinkers.

    or

    Kevin Kessler keeps the ketchup in the kitchen.

    Your choice AND you can only use the name “Blouise”!!

    1. Blouise’s banal bon-mot better be by (the) book, betimes being backpatting. Bron better beware building baseless branches buys boding bedlam, boring besides.

      Elementary erroneous element elimination erodes enhancement: KessEler

  19. Slarti:

    I dont think it is a case of either or as you suggest. People take time off for all kinds of stupid stuff and with dumber reasons than to go register to vote and get an ID and they dont get fired. There are always slow times at work and most bosses arent going to get a case of the arse if you take off a couple of hours early one day to go and register to vote.

    I think you are succumbing to the Simon Legree school of anti-capitalist thought that effects so many on the left.

    As a small businessman [very small] myself, I get to hear and see behind the curtain, being one of them. I can tell you the ones I know, most are not paying themselves salaries right now and are doing their best to keep their people working. They would no more fire an employee for registering to vote than fly to the moon.

    Now if you are talking big corporations, many of which are fascist in nature, then I will agree. Small businessmen for the most part are not going to fire a person for leaving early one day of the year to register to vote.

    If you and other liberals are so upset about it, start a fund and reimburse people for their lost wages for 1/2 a day. We are probably talking about $75 per person and 50 million people, that is pocket change for George Soros. $27 billion or so. I would even pay a yearly tax to cover the lost time and so would most other people who think a voter ID is the way to go.

    Problem solved.

  20. Thanks raff–and I didn’t use no stinkin’ maffs, either! 😛

    Blouise,

    I innocently intimated invalidating imitation incidentally incurring inconvenient ire.

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