Voter Identification

Don Danz blogged This past Tuesday I voted in a local election on a city bond issue and a runoff for the school board.... I can't imagine anything more asinine than not checking a photo ID before someone is allowed to vote. Who could possibly be against checking a person's ID before they vote? Well, Democrats are opposed to it. Why? Because they say it disproportionately frightens blacks and the elderly and would keep them from voting. This is not only untrue but, also, incredibly insulting to blacks and the elderly. I guess blacks and old people don’t use checks or credit cards either because they are too scared someone will want to see some ID. What a load of c**p. The only real reason to oppose checking identification is that in some places Democrats rely on widespread voter fraud in order to be elected. There simply is no other reason to oppose mandatory photo identification before voting.

dustbury blogged You'd almost get the feeling from this conversation that the State Election Board had ordered no IDs ever be checked, lest someone be upset by having to prove his vote was, you know, legal.

The Election Board sends out a card, to the address given, with the voter's name, party registration, county, precinct number and location. A person who has this card and doesn't know where he's supposed to vote is, prima facie, probably too stupid to exercise the franchise.

Michael Bates blogged Oklahoma election officials are justly proud of our optical ballot readers, which gives us the ability to obtain quick and accurate results while still having a paper record of each vote, preserving the option of a manual count. But a ballot reader is like any other computer -- Garbage In, Garbage Out -- and it can't detect a ballot cast fraudulently. We've had too many close elections that could have been swayed by even a tiny amount of fraud: House District 78 in 2004 was decided by less than 30 votes; the 2002 Governor's race was decided by less than three votes per precinct.

In a voting system that is truly one person, one vote, only an eligible voter would cast a ballot, each voter would vote only once and would vote only in the district in which he currently lives. Oklahoma has no requirement to ensure that any of those conditions are met. For the sake of democracy, it's time we fixed that.

Michael Bates blogged "Doverspa" of
RedState.org commented on my earlier post about voter fraud that fellow RedState.org contributor Erick Erickson has helped draft a tough voter ID bill currently working its way through the Georgia legislature. Here's the
Macon Telegraph story and
Erick's entry on the bill.

Marcus Aurelius commented

• In the Washington State election it seems the main issues revolved around the validation of provisional ballots, the mailing of absentee ballots, ineligible people voting, and more ballots being cast than the number of people who were suppose to have voted
• In the Milwaukee election the main issues revolve around people supposedly voting twice, handling of absentee ballots, unprocessed voter registration cards, and data entry errors
• In the East St. Louis election the issues seem to be multiple votes from the same address and an inordinate number of absentee ballots.

In none of these instances would a person be stopped from casting a fraudulent vote if they had shown a photo ID instead of an electric bill, a bank statement, or a check from the Government.

Requiring a Photo ID would certainly make it harder for someone to vote twice. And if that photo id was one that was very difficult to fake, it would make it even harder.

Can you point to an example of actual voter fraud, which would have been stopped if a person had shown a photo ID instead of an electric bill, a bank statement, or a check from the Government? Also, the article you link to claims that a person who is not able to produce a valid picture ID will not be allowed to vote at all. Shouldn't they at least be allowed to cast a provisional ballot?

Marcus Aurelius at RedState shows examples where voter fraud did not involve the lack of a photo id. Those examples certainly should be addressed, but there is absolutely no reason why a photo id should not be a minimum requirement in order to vote.