Comments on: Voter ID Laws Take Center Stage at House Judiciary Hearing http://www.mainjustice.com/2012/04/18/voter-id-laws-take-center-stage-at-house-judiciary-hearing/ Politics, policy and the law at the U.S. Department of Justice Sat, 11 May 2013 16:14:31 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Paul Stokes http://www.mainjustice.com/2012/04/18/voter-id-laws-take-center-stage-at-house-judiciary-hearing/comment-page-1/#comment-20746 Paul Stokes Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:11:18 +0000 http://www.mainjustice.com/?p=64323#comment-20746 I took Cleta Mitchell's challenge, looked at the mug shots, and clicked on each one to find out the voter fraud for which they were convicted. One was multiple mail-in ballots in Oregon, two were absentee ballots, most likely also mail-in, one was fictitious voter registration by a registration agent - not voter fraud - and the last one was on a web page no longer available. Thus, in every case described, a photo voter ID would not have prevented the fraudulent voting. Mail-in voting (e.g., by absentee ballot) seems to be the primary source of voter fraud, a situation about which election integrity experts have long been concerned. Given that the full list of "voter fraud" cases is minuscule compared to the number of persons who have cast votes over a ten year period of voting, and especially when cases that would not be prevented by photo voter ID dominate the list, I think Ms Mitchell would have to agree that the RNLA study confirms that vote fraud is a negligible issue compared to the number of voters who would be disenfranchised by photo voter ID. I took Cleta Mitchell’s challenge, looked at the mug shots, and clicked on each one to find out the voter fraud for which they were convicted. One was multiple mail-in ballots in Oregon, two were absentee ballots, most likely also mail-in, one was fictitious voter registration by a registration agent – not voter fraud – and the last one was on a web page no longer available.

Thus, in every case described, a photo voter ID would not have prevented the fraudulent voting. Mail-in voting (e.g., by absentee ballot) seems to be the primary source of voter fraud, a situation about which election integrity experts have long been concerned.

Given that the full list of “voter fraud” cases is minuscule compared to the number of persons who have cast votes over a ten year period of voting, and especially when cases that would not be prevented by photo voter ID dominate the list, I think Ms Mitchell would have to agree that the RNLA study confirms that vote fraud is a negligible issue compared to the number of voters who would be disenfranchised by photo voter ID.

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