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May 02, 2008
Voting rights
We have had almost 8 years to fix the election system. And yet there are probably just as many, and perhaps more, problems and potential problems today. The NY Times' Adam Cohen opines...
It is chilling to think that state legislators and election officials would intentionally try to make it harder for Americans to vote, but they always have — with poll taxes, literacy tests and gerrymandering. There was a time when the Supreme Court regularly struck these restrictions down. In 1966, it held Virginia’s $1.50 poll tax unconstitutional. In 1972, it ruled that Tennessee’s one-year residency requirement for voting violated the Constitution.
Now the Supreme Court has switched sides. This week, it upheld a harsh Indiana voter ID law that could disenfranchise many poor, elderly and student voters. The ruling will make it even easier for other states to block voters’ access to the ballot box.
If the courts won’t protect voters, Congress has to. The Constitution, in Article 1, Section 4, gives Congress broad authority to set the rules for federal elections. It should use this power to set minimum voting rights standards that would apply nationwide and ensure that all eligible Americans could vote.
Voter registration rules are the place to start. Federal law should hold organizations like the League of Women Voters harmless if they make good-faith mistakes while registering people. There should be a federal voter registration form, usable in any state, and uniform regulations so Ohio could not throw out forms based on paper thickness and Florida could not bar voters, as it now does, from fixing small errors on a form within a month of an election.
Congress should also regulate voter challenges at the polls. Parties and candidates often use bad-faith challenges as a dirty trick — to intimidate voters or to slow down voting in certain neighborhoods. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, has a good bill that would require challengers who are not election officials to sign an affidavit stating why they believe a specific voter is not eligible.
The prevailing sentiment, often unspoken, in both parties is that they value the option to be able to use what might be termed "dirty tricks" when they need to. That's the only explanation that fits.
Personally, I don't mind the idea of a voter ID card. I have one (though I think it is probably called a "registration card". I think that most counties or cities issue one when you register. Occasionally, just for fun, I actually show the election judge my ID card when I get my ballot. Sometimes they sort of lean back in their chair like they want to distance themselves from the thing and say firmly that they don't need to see it. I've always thought that to be rather odd. Of course, in all the years I've been voting, I don't think I've ever stood in line for more than 2 minutes, and I've never suspected any dirty dealings in my own precincts in any of the six cities in three states in which I have voted in the last 18 years. Count myself lucky, I guess.
Make it simple. My voter registration card is just a postcard. It is not very costly, and something the county does anyway. While forgery is possible, I'm not sure that most college IDs would be that much more secure. If you don't have your registration card, sign an affidavit and your vote should be presumed eligible until specifically challenged.
I'm less inclined to the idea of a standard ballot, though I think that it would be workable to have a set of minimum standards for a short list of possible voting methods. Let very small precincts count paper ballots by hand if they want, but put some parameters on ballot design. Optical scanners are a popular choice in many areas. Again, putting some parameters on the design would be ok. Electronic machines would ideally give you a copy of your vote which would be placed in a traditional ballot box--just in case. And count the paper copies in a random sample of precincts.
Coming up with a system that an objective outside observer would find to be fair (or at least subject to less potential for mischief than the present system) shouldn't be hard. Finding an objective outside observer to render that judgment may be the greater challenge. I, for one, am not holding my breath.
UPDATE: Just to make it clear... I do not favor a national voter ID card. No way. We don't need a national ID card. I just find it odd that my county goes through the effort to print a voter registration card and the election judges practically recoil in horror when I show it to them. I have no doubt that a little tightening of standards using procedures already in place could eliminate a lot of potential for mischief. But like I said, neither party really wants that.
Actually, I think the underlying problem is that most people take the election process for granted. If more people got serious about making the system work in a way that was as efficient and equitable as possible (recognizing that there are tradeoffs inherent in that), then we would be better off. Unfortunately, the incentives (monetary and political) are lined up against that, which is why I'm not holding my breath for any kind of positive change.
I will reiterate that I think it would be smart to count a random sample of paper ballot backups in precincts with electronic voting machines. Just sayin'.
Posted by William Polley at May 2, 2008 01:04 AM
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Comments
It seems that there could be all sorts of opportunity for abuse of this. Unless I am mistaken, Social Security cards were initially widely viewed with suspicion. The government spent a great deal of effort explaining that SS cards would "Never be used as a federal ID system". Try getting a bank account without giving your SSN, or give your SSN out to several strangers on the internet. I would say it is currently used as a citizen ID number, yes?
So let's move on to some possible grim outcomes of having a "Voter ID card". It could be initially benignly presented to the public in a similar manner as Social Security cards once were.
Later on we can add a magnetic strip to encode the individual's personal information on the card. Later still we can eliminate voting judges and simply slip your ATM-like Photo ID card into the magic Diebold voting machine and away you go on your menu-dirven ballot.
And why not? It's more efficient and faster than going through the process of having people manually verify your name and address. Just swipe and vote, cuz if you don't have a voter card, you shouldn't be allowed to vote, right?
At this point we can begin to develop a national database of how each individual has voted over their lifetime. It might even turn a profit for the government if companies would pay to access this information for political background checks, not unlike credit checks. You know, to see if someone had voted for Nader or Gore.
Sweet democracy!
Posted by: Idaho_Spud at May 2, 2008 04:59 AM
I share your concern, but I don't think that your scenario is a foregone conclusion. I did not express myself clearly when I said that personally I don't mind the idea of a voter ID card. What I meant to say is that I don't mind the idea of being required to produce a document with your name and address on it. I would not want a national system. In the rest of that paragraph, I was referring to the registration receipt that the county sends out. Apologies for any confusion.
My position is simple. Registering to vote is something that most of us accept as a good idea to keep the level of fraud down. If you are against the requirement of voter registration, you can stop reading here because we will agree to disagree and nothing more I say will convince you.
When I register, I get a postcard that has my name, my voting districts, and my polling place. When I go to my polling place, they ask my name, look on their list for my name and I sign the roll. I suppose that my signing the roll is roughly the same as signing an affidavit that I am who I represent myself to be.
For the most part, it works smoothly. Like I said, I've never seen or suspected any problems in precincts where I have lived. And like I said, maybe I've been lucky.
And no, I did not say that someone who doesn't have an ID card should not be allowed to vote. My position would be that someone who does not have a registration receipt should sign an affidavit stating that they are who they represent themselves to be and that they reside in that precinct. We do the same thing already for people who show up and for some reason are not on the roll.
I do not favor a national voter ID card. I just think that it is odd that election judges practically recoil in horror when I show them the registration receipt that the county mailed me. We already have a system that could eliminate a lot of potential for mischief if we just tightened it up a bit. That's all.
I certainly don't want a police state (Papers, please!), but I don't think that being required to produce something with your name and address on it is a terribly onerous requirement for voting.
Posted by: William Polley at May 2, 2008 04:10 PM
Hi William,
I didn't say my scenario was a foregone conclusion. I merely noted the mission drift that has passed in the decades since Social Security cards were issued with the blithe assurance that they would never be used as a citizen ID card. I then presented a scenario in which that the same mission drift *could* occur (probably without much opposition) in Voter ID cards.
I am not altogether sure how much voter fraud there is in our present system at an individual level. If there is individual-level fraud, wouldn't fraudulent individuals with opposing views ballots tend to cancel out one another?
I will take that idea one step further: It is likely that only polito/economic organizations are motivated enough to commit fraud on a scale massive enough to influence outcomes - in which case an easily forged ID would do *far* more harm than the minor problem we have, yes?
So it would seem that we need a Voter ID card with robust security characteristics, and down the path of unintended consequences we go.
Besides, by far the most aggregious case of trampling on ballot accuracy that I can recall involved the supreme court ordering a halt to a ballot re-count ;)
Posted by: Idaho_Spud at May 3, 2008 09:34 AM