Tom Sgouros: The Perfect Example Of Dumb Reform
Monday, July 04, 2011
Happy Fourth!
Since we're celebrating the creation of our great nation today, save a thought for one of the fundamental rights we all enjoy: the right to make our voices heard at the ballot box. Then marvel with me at the callous disregard for that right shown by the General Assembly last week.
Last week, the House passed a Senate bill to require voters to show an ID when you vote. This is a nearly perfect example of a dumb reform: one that sounds good, but won't fix anything, will deny some people their right and will cost money to boot. The idea is to protect against voting fraud, of course. But the idea that people impersonating other people is a significant kind of fraud is absurd. Imagine the numbers of fake voters it would take to sway an election. Do people imagine some kind of clandestine casting call in abandoned mill buildings in Olneyville to recruit phantom voters who then fan out around Providence to cast their nefarious votes? In all of history has a conspiracy so large ever remained secret for long?
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTWhat does vote fraud look like?
Vote fraud is not a problem to sneer about, but this is not how it happens. Vote fraud happens when campaign workers troll retirement housing looking for people to "help" with their absentee ballots, when corrupt officials stuff ballot boxes and falsely check off names from the rolls to cover their tracks, when people maintain a fictitious address, as many city workers used to do in Providence in order to satisfy the residency requirement. There are other varieties, too, but they all have something in common, which is that none of them will be prevented by having you show a drivers license at the polls.
Your driver’s license has an address on it, but it can't be used as proof of that address. To see why, look at yours and turn it over to see the change of address instructions on the back. That's right, to change the address, you scribble the new address in the space there, and then promise to tell the DMV about it. Changing licenses to provide proof of address would cost tens of millions to change the system and to reissue several hundred thousand licenses. Because of this, the new law does not require the address on the license to match your voter registration. You can even use your birth certificate or Social Security card as an ID, and these don't have an address, or even a photo! Bruce Schneier, a writer on security issues I admire, has called measures like this "security theater." Like TSA officials who confiscate your tweezers before you get on an airplane, voter ID is a measure that will only appear to make things safer, without actually doing anything of the kind. It's a waste of effort.
Worse, it will actually prevent some people from voting. A study by researchers at the NYU law school in 2006 found that about 11% of the population does not have ID. The reasons vary, but those are the facts. My father, who can't see well enough to drive, had only an expired drivers license for 15 years, until the tellers he was friendly with at his bank moved on and the new tellers wouldn't cash his checks any more. Getting a valid ID isn't terribly hard, but it is inconvenient and it can cost money, for birth certificate copies, naturalization papers, lost work while you're at the DMV, and so on. The perfectly predictable result is that people -- predominantly poor, disabled, elderly -- who are entitled to vote will be denied that right.
An argument for ID
The best argument for requiring an ID that I've heard comes, not from North Providence, but from Block Island. In the 2010 election, 810 people voted for Governor there, while the 2010 census only shows 825 residents over 18. This is an astonishing turnout, but a more likely explanation is that a significant number of people are voting from their vacation residence, since there are 1400 active voters registered. There were 126 mail ballots in the 2010 vote, along with 684 who were present on the island (in November). It does not appear that the mail ballots were decisive in any of the races this year, but it also doesn't seem quite fair for an out-of-town contingent to have so large a say in town government. But though there will be a few of those voters who won't have an ID they can show, but there will be plenty of others who will. Someone who owns a home on Block Island owns an address they can claim, with utility bills and the like to "prove" they live there. With that population, a single high-profile voting address investigation would likely be much more effective in leaving town government to its residents.
So what do we have? A problem called vote fraud and a "solution" that won't prevent any of the known kinds of fraud and that will prevent some people from exercising what is perhaps the most important right in a democracy. Infringements on a right as fundamental as voting must clear a very high bar to be justified in my book, and this one is not even close.
Sadly, this bill has passed both the House and the Senate. We can only hope Governor Chafee understands that protecting the right to vote is an important responsibility. Fireworks and parades are well and good and lots of fun, but we truly honor our founding fathers by protecting the rights they helped establish and that made our country the great nation it is today.
Please call Governor Chafee's office and ask him to veto this bill.
Tom Sgouros is the editor of the Rhode Island Policy Reporter, at whatcheer.net, and the author of Ten Things You Don't Know About Rhode Island.. Contact him at [email protected].
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