USSC majority ignored the Key Q: How many legitimate votes will be deterred per in-person "Voter ID" fraud prevented?

[ProgressiveEconomist]

fraud prevented?

If you missed this week's announcement of a Supreme Court decision upholding "Voter ID" in Indiana, see, for example, an article on the jubiliant Republican reaction to it at http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/hc-scotus0429.artapr29,0,4555639.story .

IMO, the key question the USSC should have answered addresses estimated costs in legitimate votes deterred by "Voter ID" laws, compared to their alleged benefits in preventing impersonation of registered voters at the polls. The Justices had to "reach" back decades to find even a handful of alleged examples of such in-person fraud.

The real answer appears to be: millions of legitimate voters would be deterred, and at best a few impersonations might be prevented. See the Carter-Baker Commission Voter ID dissent quoted below.

While the media spin tens of thousands of words about Jeremiah Wright, they have devoted only a few sentences to what could be the decisive factor in keeping Democrats out of the WH once again this fall.

The ingeniously deceptive "Voter ID" idea came from the devious mind of Republican Prince of Darkness Jim Baker. IMO, it got into public policy through the negotiating weakness, poor research, and ignorance of Jimmy Carter on the Carter-Baker Commission and of Chris Dodd on the "Help America Vote Act" conference committee.

Anyone who's studied economics knows about cost-benefit analysis. Whenever a proposed policy change ostensibly would prevent something undesirable from happening, it's important to investigate whether the alleged "cure" is more harmful than the problem it is supposed to solve.

Such analysis has been done for "Voter ID", but has remained obscure because of media incompetence and corruption. Thus the relevant cost-benefit analysis has been ignored by powerful Republican pols and judges. Judge Richard Posner, who wrote the lower court opinion the Supreme Court upheld for Indiana, happens to be a well-known economist himself. So it is especially galling when he approves "Voter ID" with cynical sophistry, and when the Bush-appointed majority on the Supreme Court ratifies what they certainly must know to be unsound legal reasoning, apparently for pure partisan political advantage.

Below is a dissent from the Carter-Baker Commission report which exposes the high-level voter disfranchisement fraud just perpetrated by the USSC:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From http://www.carterbakerdissent.com :

"Commissioner Spencer Overton [e-mail] T: 202.994.9794

DISSENTING STATEMENT

I am a professor who specializes in election law, and I served on the Carter-Baker Commission. I am writing separately to express my dissenting views to the Carter-Baker Commission's photo ID proposal.

... 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."

[notesdev]

1. I don't see why ID should be a problem

I have to pull out an ID to buy a beer or a pack of smokes. I get IDed 10 ways from Sunday with any interaction I have with the government, no matter how trivial.

With fraud such a huge issue and the integrity of our elections so important, displaying your ID at the voting booth shouldn't be an issue.

This is especially so since there is an organized effort to have Bush's slave labor class of illegal aliens vote, which amounts to an act of war. If there weren't enough illegals in the country to change the results of our elections - and therefore to steal our fundamental human right to self-determination away from us - then ID wouldn't be an issue.

[shadowrider]

2. Agreed

I work in a field where we install copper cabling. What's leftover usually WAS thrown out, but I take it to a scrap yard. I must produce a valid form of picture ID before they'll buy from me. I don't understand why producing valid picture ID to vote is such a problem.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

3. Did you read the estimate of 19 MILLION voting-age Americans who DO NOT HAVE

photo ID? It was near the end of the long quote at the bottom of the OP.

You most likely own a car and drive to work daily. Thus because of your state's Motor Vehicle laws, you have to carry a valid up-to-date photo ID with you wherever you go.

But unlike you, 19 MILLION adult Americans do NOT have photo ID of the kind required by the Voter ID law. The USSC just put an extra step between them and the voting booth that was not there last week.

Ask yourself, who is least likely to carry an up-to-date photo ID? For whom would they vote if they could, McCain or the Democrat?

That is the devilish ingenuity of Jim Baker's "Voter ID" ploy. When people first hear about it, they tend to see nothing wrong. But when they know the facts and have a chance to think them through, they see that "Voter ID" is just another Republican manipulation of the right to vote, guaranteed to disfranchise some of the elderly, disabled, poor, and urban--groups that tend strogly to vote Democratic.

[notesdev]

4. A lot more people have picture ID

than vote.

I don't know anyone who doesn't have a picture ID, even those who don't drive. Even the poorest Americans need ID to claim benefits.

I don't see how one can even tell a legitimate voter registration from an illegitimate one without some sort of ID to back it up.

I have a feeling that the vast majority of those "19 million adult Americans" who don't have ID aren't actually American citizens, don't belong in this country in the first place, aren't eligible to cast a vote. That number, 19 million, is awfully close to the estimates of the number of illegal aliens in this country.

I'm tired of these people taking jobs from my countrymen, stealing our tax dollars, and driving our wages into the garbage can, and will absolutely not consent to them further undermining our right as Americans to choose our own representatives.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

6. "don't belong in this country in the first place" ??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is that your opinion of anyone who does not own an automobile?

Don't forget, at the same time as "Voter ID" is being pushed by the kinds of Republicans cited in the Hartford Courant (at http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/hc-scotus0429.artapr29,0,4555639.story , a link from the OP). the same people are pushing "Real ID". A passport or military ID now is not sufficient to get you a dirvers license in many states. You have to get a certified copy of a birth certificate, which can be costly and take months. And thousands of elderly may not even have birth certificates on file with the State.

I believe you when you say you don't know anybody who doesn't have picture ID. Such people most likely are not very mobile. But millions of them have in the past come out of their lairs on Election Day. With "Voter ID", we can be sure that fewer of them will be able to vote in November, and John McCain will be the beneficiary of their absence.

[notesdev]

8. How about this

We're not talking about anyone who doesn't have an automobile - plenty of people have non-driver IDs. How about we put an effort into getting those voters who do not some ID? If someone doesn't have an ID, voting isn't the only way these people can't interact with society. My lifestyle is pretty modest and I still need to show ID in all sorts of situations that are far less serious than an election.

My concern is this: an election is an immensely serious thing. To conduct a free and fair election, there needs to be some accountability trail, otherwise every precinct has the potential to individually alter the results, disenfranchising some or all of the voters.

We need some insurance against the men who count the votes. This means that paper ballots as physical evidence of the vote, and it also means ensuring that only those who are actually eligible to vote can do so, since we host a sizeable foreign population. Ultimately, this is America, and it is our right as Americans to determine our own destiny and not have our choices altered by the action of others.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

9. How about THIS: When MILLIONS of legitiamte votes will be deterred by laws

that will have NO MEASURABLE EFFECT on fruadulent voting, Congress must SUPERSEDE those partisan sophistical state laws with MANDATORY NATIONAL STANDARDS for fair voting.

And those standards will mandate that no alleged state-level "improvements" in voting rules can disfranchise a number of LEGITIMATE voters greater than the number of fraudulent votes that can reasonably expected to be prevented by such "improvements".

The "voluntary" voting standards negotiated by Jimmy Carter and Chris Dodd have proven to be invitations to Republican partisan manipulation of the franchise, shnanigans that many alleged Democrats are too gullible to notice being perpetrated, time and time again.

[notesdev]

10. It's just not reasonable

not to have an accounting for eligibility to vote. A paper trail on the output is useless without a paper trail also on the input against which to match it. Too much power is in the hands of individual precincts to modify the vote, and too few checks against it.

Speaking of accounting, I'd like to see some accounting of the estimate you are relying on. I find it hard to believe there are anywhere near that many people in the position you suggest, with no ID but legitimate voters and people who actually do vote. The only class of people that I know of that typically function without ID are illegal aliens.

A situation where there is no assurance of the integrity of the franchise is not an election; it's a farce.

[VP505]

5. Its well known that

this kind of ID requirement only serves to suppress the vote. I have worked the polls as a Presiding Judge for more than 20 years and frankly it would be near impossible, IMO, to throw an election by stealing votes at the polls. If those pushing these ID requirements were really serious about vote integrity they would be fighting tooth and nail for paper ballots and to get rid of hackable touch screen and other electronic machines. Its not who votes but who counts the vote where election theft will happen.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

7. Thanks for that comment. Sometimes I wonder whether other DU posters

really are as naive as they sometimes seem to be.

Every bureaucrat knows that to limit the number of people getting through their paper-chases, all you need to do is add another arbitrary barrier. I've heard it propounded that, in general, every extra bureaucratic hurdle deters one-third of the people who've gotten through the process to the point where the hurdle is imposed.

For another example of the same principle, consider why retailers don't simply reduce a price by $50, rather than offering a $50 mail-in rebate. The answer is: the rebate provides a bigger profit! A predictable percentage of people who buy the item won't bother to fill out the rebate coupon, find a stamp, address an envelope, and put it in the mailbox!

And if people will pass up $50 so easily, wouldn't they also pass up the chance to cast a ballot if voting were made even more bureaucratic? The extra step of having to go get a photo ID (for those don't already have an acceptable one) will be a predictable dealbreader for a certain percentage who would have voted otherwise.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

11. Thank you, anonymous recommender #1

[ProgressiveEconomist]

12. Thank you, anonymous recommender #2

[Thothmes]

13. In effect they did

the plaintiffs were unable to build a substantial case that imposition of the law as written in Indiana would deny people access to vote in an election.