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> Do voter ID laws disenfranchise more legitimate votes than illegitimate ones? Almost certainly. Remember that voter ID laws only tackle one type of potentia

> Do voter ID laws disenfranchise more legitimate votes than illegitimate ones? Almost certainly. Remember that voter ID laws only tackle one type of potential fraud: I go to the polls and impersonate someone else. That's it. Absentee overvoting, over-registration, ballot stuffing - these aren't addressed by requiring an ID. So now, some numbers: in a paper put together by Justin Levitt, a con-law professor, he was able to find 31 instances of in-person vote fraud that would've been prevented by requiring ID at the polls.[1] Even if we assume we're undercounting dramatically, there's still no real evidence to indicate that requiring an ID would make a real impact. DOJ estimates are that between 600,000-700,000 registered voters in Texas alone lack an ID[2]. So yeah, there's no real evidence that indicates requiring a registered voter to have a photo ID does anything but "place a burden on lots of registered voters that don't have IDs". -- [1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/a... [2]: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-voter-id-laws-are-being-used-to-disenfranchise-minorities-and-the-poor/254572/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-vote...

anigbrowl 12y ago
Citing the Atlantic article from 2 years ago while ignoring the results of this new study is disingenuous at best. Up to last week I also thought that the number of illegal voters was negligible, but after looking at this study and establishing the quality of the CCES dataset on which it is based, I have to revise that opinion. Ignoring data that you don't like is fundamentally self-defeating. More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010. The number of non-citizens in the US is about 30 million - ~12m legal permanent residents, ~12 million who have immigrated illegally, and ~6m on various non-permanent visas. So you're looking at ~600k who voted illegally in 2010 and maybe ~1.7m who did so in 2008. That's a hell of a lot of people. Now, I agree that overall this is less than the number of citizens who don't have ID, although I have serious doubts about the genuine political engagement or desire to vote of anyone who is entitled to a US ID and doesn't get one. So numerically it's less of an issue. But it's a problem because it corrupts the political process in 2 ways; it bring results into question, and it allows people who don't like a result to cast aspersions on it by appealing tot he general principle, even in places where the numbers don't support a claim of being swung by illegal voters. It's also a problem for the people who vote illegally (who are likely to be less educated, as the article points out); voting illegally is treated as a major federal crime and can lead to permanent, no-appeal and no-expiration deportation, and even retroactive cancellation of US citizenship if a naturalized citizen is later discovered to have voted illegally, with no statute of limitations as far as I can recall.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  "Ignoring data that you don't like is fundamentally self-defeating." I agree. FTA: "We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted." Just because "X is a genuine problem", which I agree we should regard more likely in light of this study, doesn't mean "Y, which supposedly addresses X" is a good idea. In this case, we seem to need better matching of voter registration to citizenship or suffrage for resident aliens - neither of which has anything to do with producing an ID at the polls.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    I'm not sure why you are bringing this up, since I'm not claiming that photo ID is a panacea for the problem of illegal voting. I'm taking issue with the other poster's claim that the extent of such voting is a non-issue. Now, it's true that a lot of people who are exercised about the issue of illegal voting are also loud proponents of photo ID as a solution to that problem, but I am not one of those people.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      I don't see where owenmarshall said that "illegal voting" was a non-issue. They said that there was no issue with "one type of potential fraud: I go to the polls and impersonate someone else", that there were few "instances of in-person vote fraud that would've been prevented by requiring ID at the polls", and that "there's still no real evidence to indicate that requiring an ID would make a real impact." All of that seems to jive with the article. I see how your comment may not have been advocating voter id, but then I don't see what you were actually objecting to. I apologize for reading more into your comment than was there, but I'd welcome clarification.
      - anigbrowl 12y ago
        Well, I said in the very first sentence that relying on the data in a 2012 article to articulate the scope of illegal voting was pointless. The previous conventional wisdom was that the known instances of illegal voting were in the mere dozens, which is negligible compared to the hundreds of thousands known to lack ID who might be unjustly disenfranchised by ID requirements. But this new evidence suggests that the incidence of illegal voting is several orders of magnitude greater than previously thought. In passing (which I should have mentioned earlier) Remember that voter ID laws only tackle one type of potential fraud: I go to the polls and impersonate someone else. is incorrect. It can also act as proof that someone who registered without being entitled to vote did in fact vote. Registering to vote when you're not entitled to do so is a federal offense, as is actually voting, but obviously only the latter affects the outcome of elections (which is why it's such a political football). Well, registering indirectly affects elections insofar as it affects the way congressional districts are organized, but the marginal impact of illegal registration is much lower than the marginal impact of illegal voting.

anigbrowl 12y ago

Citing the Atlantic article from 2 years ago while ignoring the results of this new study is disingenuous at best. Up to last week I also thought that the number of illegal voters was negligible, but after looking at this study and establishing the quality of the CCES dataset on which it is based, I have to revise that opinion. Ignoring data that you don't like is fundamentally self-defeating. More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010. The number of non-citizens in the US is about 30 million - ~12m legal permanent residents, ~12 million who have immigrated illegally, and ~6m on various non-permanent visas. So you're looking at ~600k who voted illegally in 2010 and maybe ~1.7m who did so in 2008. That's a hell of a lot of people. Now, I agree that overall this is less than the number of citizens who don't have ID, although I have serious doubts about the genuine political engagement or desire to vote of anyone who is entitled to a US ID and doesn't get one. So numerically it's less of an issue. But it's a problem because it corrupts the political process in 2 ways; it bring results into question, and it allows people who don't like a result to cast aspersions on it by appealing tot he general principle, even in places where the numbers don't support a claim of being swung by illegal voters. It's also a problem for the people who vote illegally (who are likely to be less educated, as the article points out); voting illegally is treated as a major federal crime and can lead to permanent, no-appeal and no-expiration deportation, and even retroactive cancellation of US citizenship if a naturalized citizen is later discovered to have voted illegally, with no statute of limitations as far as I can recall.

dllthomas 12y ago
"Ignoring data that you don't like is fundamentally self-defeating." I agree. FTA: "We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted." Just because "X is a genuine problem", which I agree we should regard more likely in light of this study, doesn't mean "Y, which supposedly addresses X" is a good idea. In this case, we seem to need better matching of voter registration to citizenship or suffrage for resident aliens - neither of which has anything to do with producing an ID at the polls.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  I'm not sure why you are bringing this up, since I'm not claiming that photo ID is a panacea for the problem of illegal voting. I'm taking issue with the other poster's claim that the extent of such voting is a non-issue. Now, it's true that a lot of people who are exercised about the issue of illegal voting are also loud proponents of photo ID as a solution to that problem, but I am not one of those people.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    I don't see where owenmarshall said that "illegal voting" was a non-issue. They said that there was no issue with "one type of potential fraud: I go to the polls and impersonate someone else", that there were few "instances of in-person vote fraud that would've been prevented by requiring ID at the polls", and that "there's still no real evidence to indicate that requiring an ID would make a real impact." All of that seems to jive with the article. I see how your comment may not have been advocating voter id, but then I don't see what you were actually objecting to. I apologize for reading more into your comment than was there, but I'd welcome clarification.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      Well, I said in the very first sentence that relying on the data in a 2012 article to articulate the scope of illegal voting was pointless. The previous conventional wisdom was that the known instances of illegal voting were in the mere dozens, which is negligible compared to the hundreds of thousands known to lack ID who might be unjustly disenfranchised by ID requirements. But this new evidence suggests that the incidence of illegal voting is several orders of magnitude greater than previously thought. In passing (which I should have mentioned earlier) Remember that voter ID laws only tackle one type of potential fraud: I go to the polls and impersonate someone else. is incorrect. It can also act as proof that someone who registered without being entitled to vote did in fact vote. Registering to vote when you're not entitled to do so is a federal offense, as is actually voting, but obviously only the latter affects the outcome of elections (which is why it's such a political football). Well, registering indirectly affects elections insofar as it affects the way congressional districts are organized, but the marginal impact of illegal registration is much lower than the marginal impact of illegal voting.