ACLU Challenges GOP On Voter Fraud

Stae after state controlled by Republicans have recently passed new "Voter ID" laws -- laws that would require a voter to submit a government-issued picture ID in addition to a voter registration card. The Republicans say it is to prevent voter fraud, but Democrats say it is to suppress the vote. Democrats point out that the percentage of voters nationwide without a government-issued photo ID could be as high as 11% of the population (or about 21 million people), and most of those are in groups that normally vote for Democrats.

Republicans have inflated claims of supposed voter fraud to get these laws passed. A good example is in South Carolina, where the Attorney General claimed over 900 "dead" people had voted in that state. They even provided six names off their list of dead voters. The only problem is that five of the names turned out to be still alive, and the sixth had died after she voted. They have still been unable to verify their claim. And it is the same in state after state.

Now the Minnesota Republicans want a Voter ID law. But the ACLU of Minnesota has had enough of the false claims to suppress votes. They have offered $1000 to anyone who can show a single case of voter fraud that has been prosecuted in the state in the last 10 years.

The state ACLU admits there is a small number of one kind of voter fraud -- convicted felons voting before they have finished their parole. But that is already illegal, and it could not be prevented by requiring an ID -- since there is nothing that prevents these people from having a government-issued photo ID card (like a driver's license).

The kind of voter fraud the Republican law would prevent is someone voting as someone else. The Brennan Center for Justice (at the New York University School of Law) examined this issue. They found that this kind of voter fraud is irrational and very rare, that purported claims of fraud are usually proven to be false, and that some claims of fraud are really just due to mistakes made by poll workers.

The truth is that there is no widespread (or even small-scale) problem of voter fraud in this country, and the new Voter ID laws do nothing but make it harder for some people to vote. I applaud the ACLU of Minnesota, and I'll bet they won't have to pay out on that $1000 challenge. Republicans have been lying so they can suppress Democratic votes, but then lying is nothing new for Republicans. I think it is one of their most important "values".