Dan Froomkin: You Know What the ‘Voter ID’ Push Is All About, So Say So
Posted at 10:21 am, July 30th, 2012
Does any journalist who is not an overt shill for the right actually believe that Republicans are pushing voter ID laws because they’re concerned about voter fraud?
No, of course not.
And for good reason. Voter fraud simply isn’t a problem in this country. Studies have definitively debunked the voter fraud myth time and again.
In Pennsyvlania, which just adopted a tremendously restrictive photo-ID law that could disenfranchise 1 in 10 voters, state officials conceded they have no evidence of voter fraud, nor any reason to believe it could become a problem.
By contrast, there is ample evidence that voter ID laws inhibit voting, particularly among minorities and the poor — two major demographic segments that tend to vote Democratic.
And that’s hardly a coincidence. Consider the recent bragging by the Pennsylvania House Republican leader that his state’s voter ID bill “is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”
This is not simply another gratuitously partisan act by the GOP. This is an attack on the very notion of democracy. The voter ID push, along with intimidation of voter registration groups and purges of voter rolls have only one goal: blocking legitimate but probably Democratic voters from exercising their constitutional rights. It is a poll tax with a new twist.
And the pursuit of this goal ostensibly in the name of voter fraud is an outrageous deception that only works if the press is too timid to call it what it really is.
For reporters to treat this issue like just another political squabble is journalistic malpractice. Indeed, relating the debate in value-neutral he-said-she-said language is actively helping spread the lie. After all, calling for someone to show ID before voting doesn’t sound pernicious to most people, even though it is. And raising the bogus issue of voter fraud at all stokes fear. “Even if you say there is no fraud, all people hear is ‘fraud fraud fraud’,” said Lawrence Norden, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.
Think about it. If you were covering elections in another country, and one political party was actively trying to limit voting in the name of a problem that objectively didn’t exist, would you hesitate for a moment to call out that tactic — and question that party’s legitimacy? Hardly.
Modern American journalists strive for impartiality, but there is a limit. Mainstream journalists shouldn’t be afraid of being accused of taking sides when what they’re doing is standing up for basic constitutional rights. Indeed, the greater danger is that readers condemn them — or even worse, stop paying attention to them — for having no convictions at all, and no moral compass.
The GOP has taken increasingly radical positions, confident that the media’s aversion to taking sides will protect it from too much negative coverage. But failing to call out the voter ID push is like covering the civil rights movements and treating “separate but equal” as if it was said with sincerity.
All reporters should get every candidate they can on the record about the issue of ballot access, make it clear to readers whether those candidates want to make voting easier or harder, and then assert the simple truth that there is no plausible justification for making it more difficult to vote, other than partisan trickery at the expense of the rights of minorities and the poor.
July 30th, 2012 at 10:59 am |
Voter fraud is almost impossible to stop, and you leftist keep saying there isn’t any, is a hollow arguement. Recently the WI election of a State Senator was stolen by Union thugs voting in the Racine Wiscosnin precent. Everyone needs a photo ID to do anything in this Country, be it cash a check, or get on an airplane. If there are CITIZENS of this country without a photo ID, we need to get them one. Illegal aliens, college students, and felons; although a big part of the lefts entitlement electorate, are illegal voters. Voting is to important a RIGHT, to allow the disenfranchisement of tax paying citizens votes by the democrats illegal voters.
July 30th, 2012 at 11:12 am |
OK, Kevin, you make assertions, without data. In other words, you lie (regarding Union Thugs–which union thugs? how did they do this? can you prove it?) This is certainly not on a par with teh coup d’etat done by the Supreme Court in Gore v Bush
July 30th, 2012 at 12:11 pm |
Kevin Rosenberg lied: “Recently the WI election of a State Senator was stolen by Union thugs voting in the Racine Wiscosnin precent.”
Oddly enough, the GOP candidate who lot that election did not contest it and did not offer a single shred of evidence to show “voter fraud” by anyone. I wonder why the candidate who had the election stolen from him, as Kevin asserted, completely disagrees with Kevin?
Perhaps it’s RW media has been relying on stooges like Kevin to repeat whatever they say with the assurance that such folks will never bother to ask fo evidence, given they’ve been so misinformed about “voter fraud” by the cowardly “he said/she said” “fair and balanced” MSM for so many years.
July 30th, 2012 at 12:13 pm |
Apologies for typos. All thumbs on the iPhone keypad.
July 30th, 2012 at 12:18 pm |
We are creating a massive data pool of voter fraud, campaign finance, and election law info at the History Commons. Anyone interested in collaborating w/HC to expand and deepen that coverage, let me know: mtuck AT historycommons DOT org . Good article, Dan.
July 30th, 2012 at 12:36 pm |
If its true, that voter fraud is a problem, Why did the union movement loose the recall of Scott Walker. Which incidentally is damaging to our way of life.
July 30th, 2012 at 12:43 pm |
You need ID for virtually everything today why should voting for the leader of the free world be any different? It is perverse to argue that asking someone to prove they are a legitimate voter somehow threatens the constitution
If voters are not capable of getting ID or can’t be bothered to then its probably just as well they don’t vote. I spend a lot of time working with minorities and the poor and in my experience they are perfectly capable of getting the appropriate documentation and ID required to qualify for welfare, food stamps, food pantries, housing,healthcare etc I believe you will find the number of people who are physically unable to get the appropriate ID is very small and for those few local political parties can provide assistance.
You correctly state “calling for someone to show ID before voting doesn’t sound pernicious to most people” – that’s because it isn’t. Get over it and focus on some of the real problems this country has.
http://bluecravat.blogspot.com/2012/04/eric-holder-has-no-proof-of-voter-fraud.html
July 30th, 2012 at 1:19 pm |
Funny thing: a few years ago, the Republicans were all hot and bothered against having some sort of national ID card. Now, they seem to be wanting one. So let’s give ‘em one, folks. And if we were to get really civilized, it could double as the card for national health care.
Also, I read the other day that in either Alabama or Mississippi (or maybe both?), you have to have a birth certificate to get a driver’s license, but you have to have a driver’s license or similar ID to get a new birth certificate. Thus, the only way for an undocumented but natural-born citizen to vote would be to move to another state, get a driver’s license, then use that license to get a copy of your birth certificate, then move back and get an Alabama or Mississippi license, and THEN register to vote. Whew!
July 30th, 2012 at 5:46 pm |
william…80 percent of people do have appropriate ID. 20 percent do not, so of course, we should make it very difficult for those 20 percent to vote. That way, the GOP can make sure that those extremely poor, and minorities can not vote. Just like they planned. If you want non partisan info, go to the Brennan Center for Justice. Otherwise, please just try to be honest and admit that you don’t want everyone to be able to vote. Period.
July 30th, 2012 at 7:58 pm |
It would be great if we could get more mayors to adopt this proposal to combat voter fraud
http://signon.org/sign/tn-mayors-adopt-the-wharton.fb20?source=s.fb&r_by=1674512
July 30th, 2012 at 9:29 pm |
Republicans are facing demographic armageddon. They have very little support outside of middle aged and elderly whites, and are doing all that they can to retain power based on that increasingly marginal population. As non-whites grow into a majority and “social issues” like gay marriage cease to motivate mainstream voters, expect increasingly outrageous efforts by the GOP to retain power. Already there is talk of repealing the 14th Amendment. We may be within a generation of another civil war. The press will never see it coming.
July 31st, 2012 at 6:49 am |
William and Occam – what you fail to consider and allow to puncture your twisted rationale is that there are many thousands of people that have no car, no government issued ID and/or a checking account, so they go much of their lives without needing an ID that is now being required at the polls in states with voter ID laws. Therefore, requiring them to get a government issued ID is an onerous burden to someone that has no car and easy means to get to an issuing venue – which in many states are many miles from them, often deliberately so, with limited hours – and get an ID to vote. Therefore these kinds of requirements are nothing if not a deliberate attempt to discourage just these kinds of people from voting.
Federal law says that you cannot put undue requirements in place – i.e. the poll tax, etc. – that prevent someone from exercising their constitutional right to vote. The equivalent of this to the rich crowd would be like requiring them to submit to an SEC hearing on their investments before they could vote.
Couple these deliberate efforts that overwhelmingly make it hard for minorities and the elderly, who frequently vote Democrat and it’s obviously a blatant partisan attack on specific voting blocks. Then you add to the consideration of this that the level of voting fraud is so absurdly small as to make this push doubly unwarranted, you have further justification for the argument that these laws are grossly unnecessary, but also grossly discriminatory towards certain groups.
Our Founding Fathers and forebears fought for the right to vote and requiring people to have ID’s and making those requirements deliberately onerous to get an ID means these acts are specifically aimed to make it hard for those groups to vote. If you want everyone to have an ID to vote, the burden should thus fall on the government to go out and easily provide the means to get that ID – otherwise such a requirement is an unfair and illegal impingement of everyone’s right to vot
July 31st, 2012 at 7:53 am |
Awfully funny that prior to 2006 when you still needed this so called ID to get on a plane or cash a check or have a bank account ……Redumblicans weren’t pushing so hard and fast to have one too vote why the sudden interest
July 31st, 2012 at 8:09 am |
The sudden interest is they fimally figured out that the poor…minorities and a% of ederly were no longer voting for them the same with the war on womens health it targets and effects the women that don’t voter for them…poor …minorities and some of the elderly so now they figure lets just not let them vote.
July 31st, 2012 at 12:55 pm |
Now that we’ve established that voter fraud is negligible how about looking into voting machine fraud. I’ll bet the GOP will steer far clear of that issue.
Black Box Voting dot com.
July 31st, 2012 at 1:47 pm |
William Occam said, either foolishly or nefariously:
“You need ID for virtually everything today why should voting for the leader of the free world be any different? It is perverse to argue that asking someone to prove they are a legitimate voter somehow threatens the constitution”
That is not what is being asked by these disenfranchising restrictions. For example, South Carolina already had among the most strict ID requirements in the country. They required either 1) State-issed drivers license, 2) State-issued photo ID or 3) State-issued voter registration card. That’s been the law there for years, until they tried to do away with #3 this year.
Reasonable ID is not a problem. Most states already require it, though they allow for things like bank statements, paycheck stubs, etc., so folks don’t get disenfranchised. For that matter, federal law (Help America Vote Act) *already* requires ID for first time voters who didn’t register in person (where they would have had to present ID at that time.)
That said, since some 22 million legal American voters do NOT have the very strict type of state-issued photo ID called for by these purposely disenfranhcising laws, yes, it “threatens the constitution” by denying the RIGHT to vote to those 22 MILLION Americans.
“If voters are not capable of getting ID or can’t be bothered to then its probably just as well they don’t vote.”
Appreciate your determination of what should or shouldn’t make someone eligible to exercise their RIGHT to vote. Here’s my thinking: If someone doesn’t understand what rights are in this country, and can’t be capable or hasn’t bothered to educate themselves enough to do so, then its probably just as well they don’t vote. So, by that measure, I can only hope William Occam loses that right this year.
(Actually, I don’t, but maybe you’ll understand my point.)
“I spend a lot of time working with minorities and the poor and in my experience they are perfectly capable of getting the appropriate docume
July 31st, 2012 at 1:48 pm |
(…continued…)
“I spend a lot of time working with minorities and the poor and in my experience they are perfectly capable of getting the appropriate documentation and ID required to qualify for welfare, food stamps, food pantries, housing,healthcare etc”
And yet, 93-year old Viviette Applewhite from PA, who marched with Martin Luther King, can’t get one. And tens of thousands of others have the same problem, because they never had a birth certificate, or they got married since being born and can’t find their marriage license to prove their name change, or they don’t drive(!) so they can’t make the 150 round trip to get an ID from the DMV in TX, etc.
Starting to get it now?
July 31st, 2012 at 3:52 pm |
Boy, there is a lot of passion on this subject. It all boils down to what Froomkin says. There is no smoking gun evidence of voter fraud. Yet Republican dominated legislatures are hot to “fix” a non-existent problem. What other reason can there be but naked politics – making it difficult for minorities and the elderly to vote, most likely for the other party.
This initiative has a distinctly “Rove-ian” flavor to it. It was his goal during the Bush administration to turn America into a Republican dominated state. Given his active involvement in “Crossroads” and “Crossroads GPS” Super Pacs, he is not one to go quietly into the night, as his former boss has wisely done.
August 1st, 2012 at 12:22 pm |
It had already been expressed numerous times and implied for a decade that the voter disenfranchisement effort are simply to keep the poor, working class and minority voters from their right and civic duty to vote. republicans have had no populist agenda to run on for nearly fifty years, only a plutocratic agenda. That does not sell to 98% of the electorate.
August 2nd, 2012 at 6:38 pm |
Voter Fraud is the only way I know of that Obama or any Democrat can win an election. Yea, we know Obama backed the ACORN group that is also well known registration of numerous fraudulent voters in Chicago. If the candidate for the President of the United States is pushing that in his own hometown, then you know the creepy Dems are doing it everywhere. Why else would you OPPOSE enforcement of the LAW?
August 6th, 2012 at 9:36 am |
Arguing with these reality deniers is akin to beating ones head against the wall. OK David, for the last time, ACORN self reported fraudulent registrations that were discovered submitted through its voter registration drive. NONE OF THESE REGISTRATIONS LED TO AN ILLEGAL VOTE BEING CAST. NONE!
Now, you can be/are a GOP shill and pretend that it is significant that they regisstered Mickey Mouse but Mickey didn’t vote.
List the fraudulent voters you are accusing of having voted Democratic or shut the hell up.