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Politics & Government

Expert: Photo ID best way to detect voter fraud

Bill awaiting final passage in state House.

[Editor's note: Eric Boehm is a reporter with Pa. Independent.com. He can be reached at 717-920-1819.]

HARRISBURG — A proposal requiring voters in Pennsylvania to show photo identification every time they go to the polls is moving toward passage in the state House, but experts are divided over the impact the legislation will have on state elections.

The bill would require voters to show a drivers’ license or other form of state or federal photo ID as proof of their identity each and every time. Currently, voters have to prove their identity the first time they got to a new polling place, and sign the voter roll for each subsequent trip.

The legislation is modeled on a similar bill passed in Indiana in 2005. Groups on the right say the added requirements are a common sense way to make elections more legitimate and fair, but some on the left point to the added costs of the new rules and the potential for disenfranchising legal voters who may not have the proper identification. They argue the elderly, the poor and minorities are the most likely victims.

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy center based in Washington, D.C., supports the voter ID initiative in its effort to prevent voter fraud at the polls.

The new law would prevent individuals from registering under a false name or with a false registration form, von Spakovsky said.

“There is really no other way to detect impersonation at the polls,” von Spakovsky said. “Without ID, you’re entirely dependent on local election officials detecting that a registration is fraudulent. If they don’t, that name gets registered on the voter rolls as valid.”

He said the voter ID measure also prevents voting by illegal immigrants and those who are registered to vote in more than one state, which can be difficult for individual states to track.

Opponents of the legislation argue that not all Pennsylvanians have a valid photo ID, particularly if they do not drive a car. According to a study from New York University, 11 percent of Americans do not have photo identification, and an estimated 4 million in Pennsylvania don't have photo ID.

Andy Hoover, legislative director for the Pennsylvania chapter of the ACLU, said the elderly, blacks and those who make less than $35,000 annually are less likely to have a valid photo ID.

“Without any real evidence of frauds, it’s not worth the risk of disenfranchising those people,” Hoover said.

Lawsuits filed in Indiana and Georgia after the passage of similar voter identification legislation claimed minority voters would be disenfranchised. The courts upheld the laws in both cases.

The 2005 Indiana law was challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court and upheld in 2008.

During debate over the bill in committee this past month, Democratic lawmakers questioned if the voter ID rule is a solution in search of a problem.

State Rep. Greg Vitali, D-Delaware, went a step further, saying the proposal was a "cynical attempt" to surpress the right to vote.

Further debate on the bill is expected when it goes to the House.

Democrats also have pointed to the low number of convictions for voter fraud as evidence that the ID requirement is unnecessary.

There have been fewer than two dozen voter fraud convictions in the last decade, according to the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing, which was created in 1978 and tracks criminal sentences in the state for statistical purposes with the goal of having consistent sentencing guidelines.

In 2008 and 2010, there were a total of 11 convictions for voter fraud in Pennsylvania. Eight of those convictions were for a single person, who tried to misrepresent himself multiple times at different polling places during the 2008 election, according to the commission’s statistics.

Mark Bergstrom, executive director of the commission, said the number of convictions would indicate the issue is not a major problem for the Pennsylvania criminal justice system.

Von Spakovsky said voter fraud might not even be detected without an identification law in place.

State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, the bill’s prime sponsor, said the new rules are “common sense,” particularly given the long list of daily activities for which some form of identification is required.

“You have to have a drivers’ license to utilize your vehicle or to get a library card,” Metcalfe said. “Would (opponents of the bill) be in favor of letting people hunt without having to show identification to get a hunting license?”

An amendment to the bill would require the state to provide a photo ID card to anyone who did not have one for free. The change was made to prevent a later legal challenge to the bill.

No fiscal analysis of the bill has been completed yet, but the “free” ID cards could cost the state $10 million, according to a preliminary evaluation from House Democrats. The House Appropriations Committee will weigh in on the expected costs before the legislation goes to the floor.

The bill was scheduled for debate last week, but the state budget took priority. A vote on the bill could take place this week, but the schedule has yet to be determined.

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