THE STIPULATION in Pennsylvania’s voter fraud suit, brought by the ACLU and voting rights groups, is stunning. It’s likely why the Justice Department is investigating the voter ID law in that state.
The state signed a stipulation agreement with lawyers for the plaintiffs which acknowledges there “have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states.”
Additionally, the agreement states Pennsylvania “will not offer any evidence in this action that in-person voter fraud has in fact occurred in Pennsylvania and elsewhere” or even argue “that in person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absense of the Photo ID law.”
Free and Equal PA has the amicus briefs in the case.
So, if there have been no investigations, prosecutions, and none are known to exist in other states, the question remains why institute Voter ID laws laws? The answer is obvious.
Who are the voters without ID? Writes Barreto:
“There are several statistically significant differences in possession rates of valid photo ID across subgroups of the population. Specifically, female eligible voters lack ID at higher rates (17.2%) than do males (11.5%). Latino eligible voters lack ID at higher rates (18.3%) than do non-Hispanic Whites (14.0%). The elderly (over age 75) lack ID at higher rates (17.8%) than middle-aged residents (10.3%) and younger respondents (age 18-34) also lack at higher rates (17.9%). Eligible voters who make less than $20,000 annually are more likely to lack a valid photo ID (22%) than all other income categories, most notably those who make $80,000 or more (8.2%), and finally 18.5% of respondents who did not complete high school lack an ID compared to 8.3% among college graduates.”
photo via Shutterstock
So why don’t they go get a voter ID card,then? Surely, they are intelligent enough to figure out how to go get one. It’s not that difficult. I am all for Voter ID. I have to show my ID for everything else that is important.
Why does the left make this such a big issue?
How would you know how difficult it is? I would guess you have a drivers license, live in a nice part of town, have a good job and are still young, white and healthy. If you are old, don’t drive, don’t live in the nicest part of town or for that matter live out in the country, and a person of color, its not as easy as you think. Getting proper ID for a lot of people means traveling long distances, spending money they don’t have, and for what? To prevent voter fraud that hasn’t ever been a problem in this country for the last 100 years or so? Voting is a RIGHT in this country, not a privilege like a drivers license, checking account or credit cards, This is nothing but a poll tax, pure and simple.
My mother is no longer living but she voted in every election: local and national She was my hero and inspiration. She never got a driver’s license and if she were living today she would be too old to be given a driver’s license and so for the first time in decades she would be turned away from the voting booth.
You think that’s fair? That’s one reason it’s a big issue!
There are other Voter ID cards. They don’t have to be driver’s license.
No points there.
I thought Republicans were for small government, and they want to get it off our backs. How is this anything but an unnecessary intrusion into peoples’ lives? Oh, wait, it’s not rich people who are affected, is it? Those are the only folks we’re really talking about when we’re talking about getting government off “our” backs, isn’t it?
What a silly, sad-ass waste of time this is. The only thing you need to do to prevent vote fraud is to have registration lists that you check off, which I think just about everyplace in America does already. Tell them who you are and where you live, and they check you off their list. If you’re registered, you’re good. Pennsylvania clearly knows of no complaints made about people pretending to be someone else and voting for them, and yet everyone has to go through this “voter ID” nonsense.
Conservatives were against more ID requirements back in the days when they were discussing having to have Social Security cards, which, as it now turns out, aren’t adequate ID to prevent something that hardly ever happens anyway, if it happens at all.
I don’t buy into that it’s too hard to go get a voter ID card. According to Taylor’s stats up there, the only group that MAY have a problem going to get a Voter ID would be the elderly. The others are all healthy and intelligent enough to figure it out. Maybe, it’;s just plain laziness.
Your response is intellectual laziness. I wrote that it’s a waste of time. No one has time to do something that is a waste of time. As a taxpayer, I abhor additional, unnecessary expense, which is something that conservatives claim to do until it prevents behavior they don’t like to see, like all the riff-raff voting. But go ahead and name-call the people as “lazy” who disagree with you, rather than actually answering the charge that this is nothing but an extra step meant to dissuade people who don’t have either the time or the resources to get this done easily.
Now, as for the question you raise, it’s nonsense, too. You can’t get ID without going to a state agency, which is normally only open during typical office hours. Many people who are poor or lower middle class have jobs they cannot afford to take time off from to go get ID that they don’t need for any other reason than to vote once or twice a year.
Even on the basis of its own merits, your argument is pitiful, only the more so because you’ll be back here soon lamenting some liberal “waste” of money that actually does do some good for someone.
You’re comments, Cujo, are pure B.S.
No points scored.
IF everyone in the country had a voter ID cards the Republicans would find some other means to suppress the vote.
Your attitude is a huge part of the problem here.
my comment was for cjoblak@hotmail.com
Cujo Ramsgate, newdealdem1-Spot on!
and I could say that your attitude is part of the problem
This is what happens when you elect representatives who are criminals. It is a concerted effort to deny people the right to vote and they should be procecuted along with all the other right wing slimeballs in every other state who have done the same thing. It is a shame Mr. Holder is too busy raiding legal marijuana clinics and rounding up illegal aliens by the hundreds of thousands.
He doesn’t seem to be all that busy about bank fraud, though. That should leave an entire division of DoJ underemployed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/voter-id-laws-are-good-protection-against-fraud/2011/07/08/gIQAGnURBI_story.html
The author of that op-ed is from Kansas and co-authored the Arizona immigration law.
Kris W. Kobach is secretary of state of Kansas. He is also co-author of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 law on illegal immigration.
I know that, Taylor, and I think he makes valid points on why we should have Voter ID cards. But, besides that. I am still all for Voter ID. as I stated before, I have to show my ID for everything else that is important, and to me, this is one of the most important things that I have as a right in my life.
From that link:
Two hundred and twenty-one cases over 14 years? That’s not even counting that some of them were for absentee ballots, which probably would not have been prevented by voter ID requirements, anyway.
They didn’t investigate any of these complaints, because it was supposedly too costly. Instead, they’ll require that a large portion of their population obtain ID who wouldn’t otherwise, costing both themselves and the various Kansas governments responsible for ID, time and money that wouldn’t otherwise have been needed. All to prevent an average of 15.8 cases of vote fraud (in a 2010 population of 2.8 million) a year that they didn’t think were important enough to investigate anyway.
Yes, that doesn’t sound like an unnecessary and wasteful law, does it?
“One of the most brazen cases of voter fraud occurred in a state representative race in Kansas City, Mo., last year. It was a Democratic primary between J.J. Rizzo and Will Royster in a district where the victor was certain to win the general election. Rizzo received about 50 votes illegally cast by citizens of Somalia. The Somalis, who didn’t speak English, were coached to vote for Rizzo by an interpreter at the polling place. Rizzo ended up winning by one vote.”
You see,you all here responding on this post, this was a Democratic primary. It’s just not Republicans that Ok with Voter ID cards. Royster tried to fight this.
Voter ID for Me! all the way!
I know a lot of Dems and Libs in that are ok with Voter ID cards.
Let’s see. A conservative who wouldn’t have had a ghost of a chance of being elected as a Republican runs for the Democratic Party nomination for mayor and he’s now a “lib” and a “Dem”. Well, technically he’s a Democrat, but he’s not any Democrat I’d have supported, just based on the what I’ve read about him. So, let’s cut the “liberals want it,too” crap. This conservative who would otherwise have no doubt run as a Republican loses by a vote, and then – wait for it – blames dark-skinned immigrants for his loss. Go figure. Never saw that coming. [/sarcasm]
Once again, there were no prosecutions, even though the allegations clearly say that Royster’s opponent was benefiting from all the fraud.
If there really was vote fraud on this scale, then KC has electoral problems that voter ID laws aren’t going to solve.
Once again, you’ve brought lazy-minded thinking to this debate. Not all Democrats are progressives. Vote fraud perpetrated by candidates can take many forms, including vote suppression, which is what voter ID laws effectively are.