Voter Identification and the New York Times

The New York Times editors think that requiring the presentation of photo identification is a bad idea.

One of the cornerstones of the Republican Party’s strategy for winning elections these days is voter suppression, intentionally putting up barriers between eligible voters and the ballot box. The House of Representatives took a shameful step in this direction yesterday, voting largely along party lines for onerous new voter ID requirements. Laws of this kind are unconstitutional, as an array of courts have already held, and profoundly undemocratic. The Senate should not go along with this cynical, un-American electoral strategy.

The bill the House passed yesterday would require people to show photo ID to vote in 2008. Starting in 2010, that photo ID would have to be something like a passport, or an enhanced kind of driver’s license or non-driver’s identification, containing proof of citizenship. This is a level of identification that many Americans simply do not have.

The bill was sold as a means of deterring vote fraud, but that is a phony argument. There is no evidence that a significant number of people are showing up at the polls pretending to be other people, or that a significant number of noncitizens are voting.

No evidence of voter fraud? Are you kidding me? As we've seen in just the past few years, elections across the country have been decided by razor thin margins, where fraud and miscounts and other irregularities can affect the outcomes. But that's not the least of the problems with this statement.

What proof does the Times have that obtaining photo identifications would be too difficult a bar to voting? None. It's a bogus argument, and the Times has no evidence to back up its contention.

As for people showing up and voting illegally, I think someone ought to remind the Times that there have been numerous reports about how the dead keep showing up to vote and that people are able to vote in multiple jurisdictions. From the Times' own backyard, a study was conducted in 2005 by the Hudson County NJ GOP on the voter rolls and it found some surprising results:

Comparing information from county voter registration lists, Social Security death records and other public information, Republican officials announced on Thursday that 4,755 people who were listed as deceased appear to have voted in the 2004 general election. Another 4,397 people who were registered to vote in more than one county appeared to have voted twice, while 6,572 who were registered in New Jersey and in one of five other states selected for analysis voted in each state.

At a news conference at the State House, Tom Wilson, the state's party chairman, took pains to say that the analysis did not look at voters' party affiliation. He also said that the party was not accusing voters of committing fraud, suggesting instead that someone else may have exploited their names without their knowledge.

The paper that carried that story? The New York Times (by David W. Chen, 9/16/2005). It's nice to see that the editorial staff reads their own paper, and fact checks at the same time.

Don Surber notes that the Times supports voter fraud and cheating. I concur.

UPDATE:
Welcome Don Surber readers! And I've managed to find my original coverage on the dead rising to vote story - to find the original NYT link (now behind the $$$ Wall).