Fraud v. Keeping Away the Vote: Party Lines at Election Time

Are you concerned about voter fraud at your polling place? What do you think keeps people from voting? Is it more important to prevent fraud or get people to the polls?

The debate over voting rights is heating up before the November 2006 Midterm Elections, with both Democrats and Republicans accusing the other side of unfairly influencing the vote.

But how fair are their claims? And what are the facts and tradeoffs of new voting laws?

Voter I.D. law

In September 2006, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would require voters to show picture IDs in 2008 and IDs that prove citizenship in 2010.

Republican leadership in the House claims that the bill would cut down on fraud, while Democrats argue that it would simply keep people from voting.

So what are the facts and tradeoffs here?

Well, there is little to no evidence that undocumented immigrants are voting in significant numbers. Republicans don’t argue with these statistics, but say that it’s hard to track illegal votes without an identification system.

Arizona has found that only 238 of its 2.7 million registered voters were non-citizens in the last 10 years, and only 4 of them are believed to have voted.

Those in favor of requiring voter identification believe that voter fraud is more widespread and a system should be in place to prevent it. After all, they say, you need a picture ID to rent a movie!

But those opposed argue that the tradeoff isn’t worth it. Sure, you’d have a more secure voting system, but it could prevent thousands, maybe millions, from voting.

Democrats argue that poor, elderly, and handicapped citizens are less likely to have picture ID and may find it difficult to get one if they are unable to pay or are immobile.

Further, Democrats argue, most illegal immigrants are afraid of being caught and deported and are not likely to risk a felony in order to vote. They say that the most likely cause of voter fraud is electronic voting without a paper trail.

Possible effects of the law

If, as Democrats argue, these requirements were to prevent poor, elderly, disabled, and minority Americans from voting, Republicans may benefit. Many of these disadvantaged groups tend to vote Democratic, so these laws could possibly affect more than just the election process, but also the outcome of elections.

Further, voting rights advocates argue that voter ID laws would make voter registration drives much more difficult, time-consuming, and costly.

State Supreme Courts in Georgia and Missouri have found voter ID laws to be unconstitutional on the basis that they place an unnecessary burden on voters.

What are the voter ID laws in your state? To find out, click here.

Electronic voting - promoting accuracy or fraud?

After the election fiasco of 2000, Congress passed the Help Americans Vote Act, a piece of legislation meant to fix the glitches in our voting system.

The bill allotted $3.9 billion dollars for election reforms in all 50 states. Only $2.9 billion have been spent and not all of the reforms have been made.

Most of the responsibility for election reform falls on the states, and each state has progressed at a different rate. Some states, including California, Ohio, and Connecticut, have direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines and laws that require a physical record of each vote or, a voter-verified paper trail. Others have the machines but no paper-trail requirement, and eight states have neither.

Look up your state here.

The paper trail movement

In 2003, a group of concerned computer science professors from Stanford began to argue that computerized voting machines should have a paper-audit component. They argued that the integrity of the election process was at stake, since computerized voting machines are subject to tampering and malfunction and that, without a paper trail, hundreds or even thousands of votes could be lost.

What do we do with the paper records?

The question of what to do with paper records has people arguing as well.

Twenty-five states have laws demanding that voters verify and then hand over to election officials a paper ballot, and 16 of those require that the paper "receipts" be considered in the case of any recount. Laws in Nevada and Idaho on the other hand stipulate that the electronic ballots, not the paper audit, should be used.

For advocates of the paper trail, using paper ballots to recount makes sense because the paper representation of the ballot is well understood, and hey, why not use them when you went to all this trouble?

But those opposed say that recounting paper ballots is too time-consuming, especially since they must be hand counted, as there is no machine to process them by the thousands like punch-card ballots.

What do you think?

Do you think a paper trail is necessary? How should recounts be conducted? What’s the situation in your state and how does it compare with what you’d like to see on Election Day? What’s going on at your polling place? You can still volunteer to be a poll worker for the upcoming Midterm Election.

Your input matters

Your representatives DO care what you think. Especially now -- 2006 is an election year and many representatives will be looking to reconnect with their constituents. Let your congressmen and women know what you think! Give your senators a piece of your mind! To find your reps, click here.

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