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Voter Identification and Integrity

The 2000 election severely damaged public confidence in the integrity of our voting systems.
A healthy democracy relies upon citizens’ confidence that elections are fair and untainted by fraud, misconduct or mistake. The fiasco in November 2000 rightly pushed election reform to the top of the public policy agenda.
A failure in voter identification, however, was not part of the problem in the 2000 election.
Voter fraud—the casting of ballots in the names of deceased or fictitious people, the casting of multiple ballots, or the casting of ballots by persons ineligible to vote—was simply not a problem in 2000 or any election since.1
Voter fraud is exceptionally rare.
There is no evidence of widespread identity fraud among voters at the polls. Indeed, an extensive inquiry into election fraud from 1992 to 2002 found that it is extremely rare.2 An exhaustive hunt in 2004 for “thousands” of fraudulent voters in Washington state succeeded in uncovering only six instances of double voting.3 And a 2005 survey of Ohio’s 88 counties cosponsored by the League of Women Voters found just four instances of ineligible or fraudulent voting in the state’s 2002 and 2004 general elections—out of nine million ballots cast.4 From October 2002 to January 2005 only 52 individuals were convicted of any type of federal election fraud, while 196,139,871 ballots were cast in federal general elections.5
Existing criminal penalties successfully deter voter fraud.
Voter fraud is rare because the risk of criminal penalties—which often include both hefty fines and prison—far outweighs the benefit of voting twice.
Restrictive voter identification requirements don’t solve voter fraud.
If there are anecdotal incidences of voter fraud, additional voter identification requirements don’t address them. Identity cards don’t prevent felons from voting. They don’t prevent individuals from voting twice. They don’t ensure that the address that appears on the card is accurate and up to date.
Restrictive voter identification requirements make election officials’ jobs harder.
Such requirements create additional administrative burdens for poll workers: they are forced to interpret the accuracy and authenticity of each identity card and determine whether individuals lacking required identification fall into an area of exemption or if their ballots should be marked and treated as provisional. As a result, voters wait in longer lines at polling places.
Restrictive voter identification requirements disfranchise millions of legitimate voters.
Approximately eight percent of the voting population—15 million Americans—do not have a driver’s license or other state-issued identification.6 The Justice Department concluded in a 1994 study of Louisiana that blacks were four to five times less likely than whites to have a driver’s license or other photo identification.7 According to disability advocates, nearly ten percent of the 40 million Americans with disabilities do not have any form of state-issued photo identification.
Restrictive voter identification requirements disproportionately impact seniors.
In Georgia, AARP reports that 36 percent of seniors over age 75 do not have a driver’s license.8 In Wisconsin, 23 percent of seniors aged 65 and older do not have a driver’s license.9 The governor of Wisconsin vetoed a 2005 photo identification bill because it would have disfranchised nearly 100,000 elderly citizens.10
Some voter identification requirements have been found unconstitutional.
In both 2005 and 2006, a United States District Court barred Georgia from enforcing laws that would require voters to display government-issued photo identification.11 The court’s 2005 ruling, which was upheld by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, declared that the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. The photo identification requirement is both discriminatory and unnecessary, the court found. The Missouri Supreme Court issued a similar ruling.
The real electoral integrity issue in America is mismanagement of voter registration lists.
In November 2000, between 1.5 and three million votes were lost or not cast because of problems with registration processes and voter lists.12 Eligible voters in at least 25 states arrived at the polls and were unable to vote because their names had been illegally purged from the voter rolls or had not been added in time for Election Day.13
Endnotes
  1. Dēmos, “Securing the Vote: An Analysis of Election Fraud,” 2003.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Oral decision of Judge John E. Bridges in Borders v. King County, Case No. 05-2-00027-3, June 6, 2005.
  4. League of Women Voters and Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, “Let the People Vote—A Joint Report on Election Reform Activities in Ohio,” June 14, 2005.
  5. Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives, “Election Statistics,” 2005.
  6. U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, “Highway Statistics 2003, Section III: Driver Licensing, Table DL-20,” November 2004. The Department of Transportation previously estimated that four percent of Americans have a state identification card for non-drivers.
  7. Alan Elsner, “Millions Blocked from Voting in U.S. Election,” Reuters, Sept. 27, 2004.
  8. Deanna Wrenn, “Three States Debate Requiring Voters to Show ID,” Ventura County Star, March 31, 2005.
  9. John Pawasarat, “The Driver License Status of the Voting Age Population in Wisconsin,” Employment and Training Institute, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, June 2005.
  10. Governor Jim Doyle, Message Vetoing SB 63, April 29, 2005.
  11. Common Cause/Georgia v. Billups, U.S. Dist. Ct., Northern Dist. of Georgia (Rome), Case 4:05-CV-201-HLM.
  12. Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project, “Voting—What Is, What Could Be,” July 2001.
  13. Democratic Investigative Staff, U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, “How to Make a Million Votes Disappear: Electoral Sleight of Hand in the 2000 Presidential Election,” August 20, 2001.
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