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A Good Debate: A Solution in Search of a Problem
Requiring a photo ID stands against the 14th and 15th Amendments absolute right to vote and defies the Voting Rights Act of 1964
By Annastacia Belladonna-Carrera
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State laws requiring some sort of identification at voting polls go back to 1950. No voters were compelled to produce a government-issued photo ID until 2006, when Indiana became the first state to legislate the requirement. Since then, 33 states have enacted some form of voter ID requirement. Seven states have particularly strict laws: Kansas, Wisconsin, Indiana, Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia.
In November, voters in those seven states will have to produce photo identification to cast a ballot in the midterm elections. Those unable to do so will be given provisional ballots, which are kept separate from regular ballots (and are often not as well secured). If a citizen returns to election officials within a short period of time after the polls close and provides an “acceptable ID,” the provisional ballot is counted. If he or she is not able to return—due to work requirements or long travel distances to the appropriate elections office—or can’t acquire the required ID in time, the provisional ballot is never counted.
This undemocratic requirement is not yet a factor in Minnesota. In 2012, our friends and neighbors took to the polls en masse and defeated a ballot initiative that would have made photo ID a constitutional requirement for municipal, state, and federal elections. It was a fortunate outcome, and given the continued push at the state and national level to revisit the topic, we must remain vigilant. The right to vote in America is absolute. And photo ID laws and provisional ballots unnecessarily hinder that right.
The right to vote, enshrined in the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, is fundamental to our system of government. The 15th Amendment holds that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
The Voting Rights Act has been called the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever passed. It broke the grip of disfranchisement sponsored by Southern legislators who routinely denied equal access to the ballot. Section 2 of the Act closely follows the language of the 14th and 15th Amendments and applies a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote based on literacy tests, which were prevalent throughout the country between 1860 and 1964.
At the beginning of this period, these literacy tests were administered to people who were seen not as citizens but as commodities to be traded, and who were murdered if their masters caught them learning how to read or write. In the wake of slavery, state officials continued the practice to disenfranchise and disempower racial minorities. This historical precedent demands that we scrutinize the purpose and impact of seemingly benign photo ID requirements at our polling places. Are restrictive regulations really needed to protect us from voter fraud? Or are there other agendas at play? One must consider the intent.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, minority voters disproportionately lack standard identification. For instance, up to 25 percent of African American citizens of voting age lack government-issued photo IDs, compared to only 8 percent of whites. And the basis states use to exclude the types of ID they will accept is often determined in a discriminatory manner. In North Carolina, for example, a voter ID law was struck down because it prohibited public-assistance IDs and state-employee ID cards, which are disproportionately held by black voters.
The ACLU also found that voter ID laws are enforced in a discriminatory manner. According to a study conducted by the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, minority voters are more frequently questioned about ID than are white voters. What’s more, several studies, including one conducted by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, have concluded that photo ID laws have a particularly depressive effect on turnout among racial minorities and other vulnerable groups.
All of this is particularly egregious and unnecessary considering that the occurrences of voter fraud at the polls are as insignificant as they are exaggerated. The same is true of the unsubstantiated narrative, pushed by certain partisan interests, that undocumented individuals are perpetuating voter fraud to hijack our country’s government and pillage its resources.
Proponents of voter ID can point to only a handful of instances in which unqualified voters managed to register to vote, or actually managed to vote (which is even more rare). And in a majority of those cases, they also fail to mention that the violators are often released felons who did not know, or understand, that they couldn’t vote.
In Minnesota, from 2013 to 2017, just two cases of voter fraud were prosecuted. Both individuals pleaded guilty to voting while under terms of probation and not being fully released from the criminal justice system. Neither of them were undocumented individuals. In the May 2017 report from the Legislative Auditor’s Office, there were just a few more instances in which individuals who were not qualified to vote tried to do so. Again, none were undocumented. (A more commonsense solution to these rare cases would be to restore the vote to felons upon release.)
Because it disproportionately impacts specific groups of citizens, requiring that Minnesotans produce government-issued photo ID before getting a ballot stands against the 14th and 15th Amendments right to vote for black citizens and other citizens of color, and defies the Voting Rights Act of 1964.
It is, simply put, a disingenuous solution to a nonexistent problem.
Back & Forth
QUESTIONS FOR ANNASTACIA BELLADONNA-CARRERA
Q: Isn’t voter ID a pretty easy way to help restore the citizenry’s faith in our elections system?
ABC: A broad range of nonpartisan organizations have explored whether government-issued IDs would somehow safeguard our elections system from fraud, and none of these entities has come up with an objective, measurable conclusion in the affirmative. As I wrote in my essay, there are other policies that could better address the very rare instances of malfeasance, like letting felons vote upon release. But specifically to the question of restoring integrity: There is no silver bullet to make that happen, largely because it’s something you can’t even measure. You can’t quantify Americans’ disgust and lack of faith in the elections system. Period. So, no, passing a law that’s not needed would not only be ineffective in that regard, it would make matters worse.
Q: If the constitutional amendment proposed in 2012 had passed, a governmentissued photo ID would have been free. Wouldn’t that have removed the concern that certain groups, particularly the poor, would be discriminated against?
ABC: No. There are other things that come into play when you look at that issue. Even if the ID itself were free—and right now a driver’s license costs between $25 and $35 bucks—if you don’t have the proper paperwork to acquire the ID, like a birth certificate, you often have to pay a filing fee and a fee to get the documentation certified. And that’s assuming you live in a metro area where you can take public transportation to the filing office. Here’s the thing: There are many layers to poverty that people who don’t live in poverty fail to consider. You might work multiple shifts. You might not be able to get time off or, more likely, afford time off to track down paperwork for an ID that’s not necessary. It’s simply a disincentive to participate in our democracy. It’s flat-out discriminatory.
Q: Other rights enshrined in the Constitution have limits, like gun control and hate speech laws. Why should the right to vote be any different?
ABC: There is a fundamental principle of taxation without representation, and to say that “Other rights are regulated—like the right to bear arms— so why can’t the right to vote be regulated?” Well, because, unlike other rights, voting is a fundamental pillar of democracy itself. And, look, this isn’t the wild, wild West. In the state of Minnesota, you can’t just show up and vote without establishing your identity. If you’re not on the books at a polling location, there are already steps you have to go through to verify that you are who you say you are. The system is adequate and it works.
Q: So what explains the support for voter ID? Does it just come down to the same old thing: Republicans versus Democrats?
ABC: It’s a mixture of things. It’s too easy to say, “Oh, this is because a majority of modern-day Republican leaders are trying to exclude all brown and black people.” I mean, that would be great, because then you could battle on that front alone. But if you go to other sections of the country, there are a lot of poor whites that will be adversely affected. Or you can go to Chicago where the Democrats have had a chokehold on the state legislature for generations, and the city still suffers from extreme disparities between whites and people of color. If it were simply about party affiliation, then you could take care of this problem when one political party is in the majority. But this isn’t about red or blue. It’s about power. It’s about special-interest groups. It’s about money. And it’s about fear-mongering and sensationalism. And unfortunately, no one political group is immune to those influences.
