Will New Photo ID Laws
Deter Fraud – or Voters?
By Susan Cohen
If you are a voter with a disability in the United States,
you have a steep road to climb to vote. But if you live in one of the seven
states that requires showing picture identification every time you vote, your
climb just got steeper.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures
website, 30 states currently require some form of identification while
registering to vote.
Before 2011, only two states, Georgia and Indiana, had
strict laws that required a photo ID be shown every time a person went to the
polls. Early in 2011, two more states, Kansas and Wisconsin, passed strict new
voter ID laws. In addition, three states that had non-photo ID laws amended
them to require photo IDs: South Carolina, Texas and Tennessee. Many more
states have bills ready to be voted on. 
Currently, only Georgia and Indiana’s laws are in
effect. All the others are expected to go into effect before the 2012
elections.
Lisa Bornstein, senior counsel of the Leadership
Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said this is a troubling trend in the
United States.
“According to a national study conducted in 2006, 11%
of Americans do not carry a photo ID with them,” Bornstein said.
“This will disproportionately impact people of color, persons with
disabilities, low-income workers, college students, rehabilitated felons and
senior citizens.”
Critics of the plan to require a picture ID to vote say
the measure is a tactic to suppress the vote, along the lines of inaccessible
polling places, shortened early voting periods, limits on poll worker
assistance, proof of citizenship requirements and restrictions on same-day
registration.
There is growing opposition to these new laws. Former
President Bill Clinton, speaking at a conference of young progressives in July,
said, “There has never been a time in my life time since the removal of
the poll tax and the Jim Crow laws that there has been such a deliberate,
passionate and disciplined effort on the part of Republican lawmakers and
governors to keep voters who traditionally vote Democratic from voting in
2012.”
According to Bornstein, there are currently many barriers
to voting for persons with disabilities, such as inaccessible polling places,
lack of accessible transportation and poll workers who are not adequately
trained to work with voters who have disabilities.
“These new photo ID laws may further discourage many
people with disabilities from voting,” Bornstein said. “It will
impact those who do not drive and therefore do not carry photo ID. Photo IDs
can be difficult for a person with a disability to obtain for many reasons.
Policy-makers should be eliminating barriers to the electoral process, not
creating them.”
One of the major proponents of the photo ID requirement is
Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow of the Heritage Foundation. In a legal
memorandum in July 2011, he wrote: “Requiring voters to authenticate their
identity at the polling place preserves the integrity of elections and access
to the voting process. Voter ID can prevent and deter: voter impersonation,
registering under fictitious names, double voting in more than one locality,
and voting by illegal immigrants.”
In a recent op-ed piece, Wade Henderson, executive
director of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and Mark
Perriello, the new president of the American Association of Persons with
Disabilities, wrote, “Proponents of the photo ID requirement state that
voter fraud is commonplace, yet multiple studies prove that this problem is
virtually non-existent.”
The article also states that “if the impediments to
voting were removed and persons with disabilities voted at the same rate as
other voters, 3.2 million additional people would cast their ballots.”
Said Bornstein: “People with disabilities need to
join this fight to show the diversity of Americans being shut out of the
electoral process. They can join existing coordinated efforts happening in most
states.”
Susan Cohen, a disability voting advocate, directs the
consulting firm Voting Access Solutions in Troy, N.Y. She can be contacted at
votingaccesssolutions@gmail.com. |
