Why We Refuse to Stop Talking About Voter ID Laws
Once it has dawned, the sun never sets on the Day of Jubilee. As the Times reports:
Most research suggests that the laws result in few people being turned away at the polls. But a study of the Texas ID requirement by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy released in August found that many more qualified voters, confused or intimidated by the new rules, have not tried to vote at all. "What voters hear is that you need to have an ID," said Mark P. Jones of the Baker Institute, an author of the study. "But they don't get the second part that says if you have one of these types of IDs, you're O.K." A second study, by the University of California, San Diego, concluded in February that the strictest voter ID laws-those that require an identity card with a photograph-disproportionately affect minority voters. After Mr. Gallego's narrow loss in 2014, researchers from the Baker Institute and the University of Houston's Hobby Center for Public Policy polled 400 registered voters in the district who sat out the election. All were asked why they did not vote, rating on a scale of 1 to 5 from a list of seven explanations-being ill, having transportation problems, being too busy, being out of town, lacking interest, disliking the candidates and lacking a required photo identification…Most surprising, however, was what researchers found when they double-checked that response: The vast majority of those who claimed not to have voted because they lacked a proper ID actually possessed one, but did not know it.
The case for these laws always has been a shabby concoction of various flavors of fakery. You will note that even the Times feels obligated to ignore the repeated studies that prove these laws are to combat a problem that doesn't actually exist:
Proponents, largely Republican, argue that the regulations are essential tools to combat election fraud...
This is virtually the same as saying that the proponents argue that regulations are essential tools to combat the infiltration of the polling places by agents of the Klingon Empire.
But the most pungent of these flavors has been the technique of requiring the ID, and then either making the ID almost impossible to acquire or failing to inform the voters what kind of ID they need. In both cases, if things work the way they're designed to work, enough of the voters you're trying to screw out of their franchise just give up and stay home. Then, when the election comes out the way you want it to come out, you can shake your head sadly at how lazy said voters are. After a couple of election cycles, the frustration sets in generally and the people you don't want involved in government remove themselves from it. Then you get to write earnest op-eds wondering where civic engagement has gone. From the Times:
Texas officials say they are spending millions of dollars to help voters understand and meet the new ID requirements, including deploying mobile offices to help citizens apply for election IDs. "We just haven't seen any large-scale problem," said Alicia Pierce, the communications director for the Texas secretary of state. But in Wisconsin, Todd Allbaugh resigned as chief of staff to a leading Republican state senator last year after attending a party caucus in which, he said, some legislators "were literally giddy" over the effect of the state's voter ID law on minorities and college students. "I remember when Republicans were the ones who helped Johnson pass the civil rights bill in the '60s-not Democrats," Mr. Allbaugh said in an interview last week. "I went down to the office and said, 'I'm done. I can't support this party any more.' "
Sometimes, like history, cynicism can rhyme.
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