did too, so don't be so shocked at the gullibility of your friend. Did a recent NY Times editorial (at
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/opinion/21thu1.html ) on HR 4844, the "Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006", shock your friends into informing themselves on the tricky 'Voter ID' issue?
"Voter ID" has been fast-tracked for enactment into federal law in large part because Jim Baker architect of the antidemocratic Florida 2000 post-election strategy for Republicans (see
http://www.hooverdigest.org/014/zelnick.html ) sneaked it past Jimmy Carter. 'Voter ID' was recommended in the 2005 Final Report of the Carter-Baker Commission (click-thru link below), set up to inform policy to prevent recurrence of election messes like the one in Florida six years ago. And administration of elections is a main focus of Jimmy Carter's foundation (see
http://www.cartercenter.org/peace/democracy/elections.html ) !
IMO, the only Carter-Baker Commission member who grasped the enormous significance of Baker's 'Voter ID' ploy was a little-known law professor. I have built on Commissioner Spencer Overton's dissent from the majority Carter-Baker Commission report to come up with an outline of reforms to put electoral democracy back on track in the US. What's your opinion?
The "Voter ID" gambit for Republican vote suppression is GENIUS! No armed stormtroopers with official-looking armbands need be posted at the polls (as in Tom Kean's 1981 2000-vote "victory" in NJ (
http://www.democrats.com/node/59 )). There need be no ChoicePoint-style biased purges designed to catch many innocent neighbors of "disfranchised felons" (as in the 537-vote Florida 2000 fiasco (see
http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/main.htm ).
Even in progressive forums, when this subject arises many who consider themselves well-informed ask, "What? You don't want voters to have to show ID on Election Day?" But "Voter ID" is for the alredy-registered. Such a measure is an abuse of the concept of ID, designed to discriminate against city-folk, poor people, and the elderly--groups that tend to vote Democratic. The devil is definitely in the details such as the inadmissibility of VOTER ID CARDS as documentation in applying for a "Special Suppression of Registered Voters Abusive Photo ID Card" (see
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=449427&mesg_id=449427 ).
To root out vote suppression schemes under current election law, courts must micromanage hundreds of details of election administration in dozens of jurisdictions. But, building on Commissioner Spencer Overton's excellent Carter-Baker Commission dissent, it may be possible to eliminate thousands of possible variations of numerous vote-suppression schemes, in one fell swoop.
Instead of having to micromanage hundreds of details of election law in all the states, districts, and other principalities that vote in Presidential elections, courts could scrutinize cost-benefit analyses that boil down proposed changes in law to their effects on numerical benchmarks. These benchmarks would be proportions of voting age people who actually vote and actually have their votes counted.
IMO, an effective strategy for halting often ingenious vote suppression schemes would have eight components. IMO, when Democrats finally achieve majorities in Congress, the Help America Vote Act must be amended to include
(1) MANDATORY minimum national standards for vote administration in all statewide and Federal elections.
(2) MANDATORY cost-benefit analysis for every proposed change in existing state law regarding vote administration, just as Professor Overton urged on the Carter-Baker Commission;
(3) MANDATORY estimation of the number of voting-age people who would be disfranchised by any proposed state vote law (for example 240,000 in MO, 300,000 in Georgia);
(4) MANDATORY estimation of the ostensible "benefit" from any proposed state vote law (for example, NO impersonations of voters stopped);
(5) MANDATORY application of the estimates to the impact of any proposed state law on the NUMERICAL BENCHMARK of maximizing, in every locality and among every demographic group in the state, the proportion of voting-age citizens (including prisoners incarcerated out-of-state and elsewhere in-state) who actually vote in statewide and National elections;
(6) Tasking the Federal Election Assistance Commission to prepare an annual report on levels of the numerical benchmarks in every state (an excellent choice for Election Assistance Commssioner would be Professor Spencer Overton);
(7) Voting representation for the District of Columbia in both the House of Representatives and the Senate;
and
(8) MANDATORY enfranchisement of "convicted felons" as soon as their actual imprisonments end.
Had these provisions been made part of HAVA from the outset, neither a Missouri "Voter ID" statute recently overturned (see
http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2006/09/11/daily55.html?from_rss=1 ) nor a similar Georgia law would have passed muster before being enacted into law. Their cost-benefit ratios would have been calculated as INFINITE (division by zero).
And subsequently courts in Missouri and Georgia would not have had to micromanage the ingenious administrative details that went into these "Voter ID" schemes, and courts need not micromanage dozens of future variants of vote-suppression we can expect state-level and national Republicans to propose in the future.
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From
http://www.carterbakerdissent.com :
DISSENTING STATEMENT
"I am a professor who specializes in election law, and I served on the Carter-Baker Commission.
...the Commission's Report fails to undertake a serious cost-benefit analysis. The existing evidence suggests that the type of fraud addressed by photo ID requirements is extraordinarily small and that the number of eligible citizens who would be denied their right to vote as a result of the Commission's ID proposal is exceedingly large. According to the 2001 Carter-Ford Commission, an estimated 6% to 10% of voting-age Americans (approximately 11 million to 19 million potential voters) do not possess a driver's license or a state-issued non-driver's photo ID, and these numbers are likely to rise as the "Real ID Act" increases the documentary requirements for citizens to obtain acceptable identification. The 2005 Carter-Baker Commission does not and cannot establish that its "Real ID" requirement would exclude even one fraudulent vote for every 1000 eligible voters excluded. ..."
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