VOTING RIGHTS - For the People Act (H.R. 1)

There is no doubt in my mind that the GOP opposition to this bill is nothing more than a bid to continue rigging our voting system to keep them in power, a bid for one-party-rule.

Yes it will give Democrats a bigger advantage, but that's after decades of Republicans using gerrymandering, vote suppression techniques to rig the vote in their favor.  It IS time to even the playing field.

"Where Democrats compromised to get Sen. Manchin’s support on voting rights bill" PBS NewsHour 6/22/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  A major battle over election reform is underway in the U.S. Senate as Republicans in some states push to enact more restrictive voting laws, while Democrats aim to override those efforts at the federal level.  Sen. Joe Manchin signaled he will vote with his party, the Democrats, to allow voting on a modified bill.  Lisa Desjardins and Yamiche Alcindor join Judy Woodruff to discuss its implications.

 

 

"Centralized voting bill won’t restore public trust in election, Sen. Thune says" PBS NewsHour 6/22/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Judy Woodruff discusses Tuesday's Senate vote on an elections reform bill with Sen. John Thune [R] of South Dakota, who also serves as the Senate Republican Whip.  Thune also weighs in on President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure package, and progress towards bipartisanship on the matter.

 

 

"Democrats ‘another step closer’ to reforming filibuster, Sen. Padilla says" PBS NewsHour 6/22/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Judy Woodruff discusses Tuesday's Senate vote on a voting rights bill with California Sen. Alex Padilla [D].  He was also California's Secretary of State for the 2020 presidential election.

SUPREME COURT - Ohio's Voter Suppression

"Why Ohio’s way of purging voter rolls is at the Supreme Court" PBS NewsHour 1/10/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  A case challenging the removal of hundreds of thousands of people from voter rolls in Ohio went to the Supreme Court on Wednesday.  Special correspondent Karen Kasler of Ohio Public Radio reports what's at stake in the Buckeye State, and Jeffrey Brown talks with Marcia Coyle of The National Law Journal about what the justices asked in the courtroom.

REPUBLICAN AGENDA - Trump's Voter 'Suppression' Commission

The perpetration of a lie.

"Election Experts See Flaws in Trump Voter Commission's Plan to Smoke Out Fraud" by Jessica Huseman, ProPublica 7/6/2017

The commission told ProPublica that states' voter rolls will be run against federal databases to find potential fraudulent registrations — a move experts say will result in thousands of errors and could distort fraud.

Vice President Mike Pence's office has confirmed the White House commission on voter fraud intends to run the state voter rolls it has requested against federal databases to check for potential fraudulent registration.  Experts say the plan is certain to produce thousands of false positives that could distort the understanding of the potential for fraud, especially given the limited data states have agreed to turn over.

“This just demonstrates remarkable naivety on how this voter data can be used,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.  “There's absolutely no way that incomplete data from some states — mainly consisting of names and addresses — can be used to determine anything.”

The commission's vice chair, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, sent a letter to states last week requesting detailed information on voters.  The request asked for information such as Social Security numbers and military status most states cannot legally make available.  But most states will be handing over information that is public, such as names, years of birth and whether they've voted in previous elections.

Marc Lotter, spokesman for Pence, told ProPublica the state voter information will be run “through a number of different databases, looking for the possibility for areas where voter rolls could be strengthened.”

While Lotter would not say specifically which databases the rolls would be run against, The Washington Times reported last week the commission may seek to check the names against the federal government's database of non-citizens.  A 2012 attempt by Florida to do that resulted in many legitimate voters being falsely flagged because they had the same names as people in the federal database.  Gov. Rick Scott scrapped the effort and eventually apologized.

Comparing names nationwide could result in far more false positives.

“How many Manuel Rodríguezes born in 1945 who are citizens are going to be on an immigration list?  There are likely to be several,” said Charles Stewart, a professor at MIT and expert in election administration.  “How will you know if he's the immigrant, or he is one of the several people with that name who are citizens and legally registered?”

Kobach runs a matching program that appears to have its own high rate of errors.  A recent study by political scientists at Stanford University found that Kobach's Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program had 200 false positives for every actual double registration.  The Kansas secretary of state's office did not immediately return a call for comment on the program.

Other systems already exist that do rigorous matching.  The Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, is a voluntary, paid system operated by a nonprofit and used by 20 states and the District of Columbia.  The system uses far more information than states are able to make publicly available, such as driver's license numbers, Social Security numbers and even email addresses.

Becker, who helped create ERIC, said it took years of work to ensure careful matches.  The speed at which Kobach and Pence sought information from states, which were given two weeks to hand over their voter rolls, and their plan for the limited amount of information they'll receive “demonstrates a remarkable ignorance of the process,” said Becker.

Lotter, Pence's spokesman, said that even if false matches were made they'd do no harm since the commission can't remove names from states' voter rolls.  He said the commission is simply going to provide recommendations and highlight any common problems that might come up in the matching process.

“What we are trying to do is create the first national look at voter registration and the potential for fraudulent registration that could lead to fraudulent voting,” Lotter said.  “At the end of the day you have to ask yourself who is not for making sure we have one person one vote?”

John Merrill, the Republican secretary of state for Alabama, said any false positive raises the likelihood a voter might be incorrectly purged.

“I would be surprised if they could find a way to improve upon the methods already in place from the consortiums that already exists,” Merrill said.  “Every time you remove a mechanism that more positively identifies a voter, it increases the opportunity for a false positive to match.”

President Trump created the commission after making unsupported claims that there were millions of illegal votes cast in the 2016 presidential election.  Kobach, the commission's public face, has long asserted without evidence that voter fraud is widespread.

Despite numerous academic studies to the contrary, Kobach has claimed that non-citizens regularly vote, that people vote twice with frequency and has backed Trump's claims of illegal voting last year.  Kobach, along with other members of the commission, has also supported restrictions on voter registration, including strict voter ID laws.

Lotter said the bipartisan nature of the commission — currently four of the 10 announced commissioners are Democrats — should assuage any concerns from critics.  The four Democrats include Maine's secretary of state, Matthew Dunlap, whose state has declined to provide the information the commission requested in Kobach's letter.

Lotter also said none of the commissioners had “pre-conceived notions” about voter fraud and that they would fairly judge the results of the matches.

Dale Ho, the director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, disputed Lotter's claims of neutrality.

“It's up is down and black is white,” he said.  “The idea that people who have made repeated public statements that they believe, contrary to all evidence, that there is massive fraud are not biased is ludicrous.”

TRUMP AGENDA - Hiding Behind the Lie of Voter Fraud

This is NOT about voter fraud.  It IS about getting data to continue the Republican agenda of vote suppression.

"What does this Trump commission want to do with states' voter information?" PBS NewsHour 6/30/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Trump has authorized a special commission to investigate his unsubstantiated claim that up to 5 million votes were cast illegally in the 2016 election.  Vice Chairman Kris Kobach penned a letter to states to send voter data, including addresses and social security information, directly to the White House.  Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Rick Hasen of the University of California, Irvine.

ELECTION 2016 - The Lie

"Is there large-scale voter fraud in the U.S.?  In a word, No." PBS NewsHour 10/17/2016

COMMENT:  The only people TRYING to rig elections are Republicans and their fascist leader Donald Trump.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Donald Trump continues to speculate that the election is rigged against him, and many supporters agree:  Only one-third of Republicans have great confidence that their votes will be counted fairly.  Judy Woodruff talks to Republican strategist Al Cardenas and Richard Hasen from the University of California, Irvine about the chances of large-scale voter fraud and the potential for voter intimidation.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  As we heard earlier, Donald Trump continues to claim that the presidential election process is rigged against him.  That claim seems to be resonating with some voters.  Just one-third of Republicans say they have a great deal of confidence that their votes will be counted fairly this election.  That's according to a recent Associated Press poll.

For more on all this, we are joined by Richard Hasen.  He's professor of law at the University of California, Irvine.  He's author of the Election Law Blog.  And Al Cardenas is a Republican strategist.  He served as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida during the presidential recount in 2000.

And we welcome both of you to the NewsHour.

Al Cardenas, to you first.

Donald Trump is stepping up these warnings.  He tweeted just a short time ago — and I'm quoting — he said:  “Of course there's large-scale voter fraud happening on and before Election Day.”  He asked, he said, “Why do Republican leaders deny what's going on?  It's so naive.”

Is there large-scale voter fraud happening in this country?

AL CARDENAS, Republican Strategist:  Oh my, there isn't, hasn't been.  And our country has been spending 200-plus years to get it just right.

The checks and balances in the electoral process is amazing.  I know our guest will know more about it than I do.  But we have state elected — state officials elected or appointed who are in charge of the overall state process.  And every local government, counties or municipalities, have supervisor elections who are elected or appointed.

And then you have local canvassing boards made up oftentimes of judges.  And they're part of this whole processes.  Everyone who works in these voting precincts get trained, gets warned about violating the laws, gets warned about the criminal implications of violating the law.

We have a whole process in America.  And in 200-some years, we have never, ever had a national election that's been impacted by fraud, not even close.  Even in Florida, where I served as chairman in the famous recount, it — was that an issue.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Richard Hasen, what is your take on this?  What is the likelihood that this process could be rigged, as Donald Trump charges?

RICK HASEN, University of California, Irvine:  If you're talking about rigging the way that Donald Trump is talking about rigging, I would say the chances are basically none.  It's impossible.

He's talking about people going into the polling place and voting five or 10 or 15 times.  He said this would happen in certain areas of Pennsylvania.  It seems to be, from what his surrogate Rudy Giuliani said, in minority areas, that Democrats are going to steal the votes by impersonating other people.

That's just now how — in the rare times when voter fraud occur, that's just not how elections are stolen in this country, and not on the kind of scale that could affect a presidential election, which would the cooperation of tens of thousands of people to try to commit voter fraud under the noses of election officials and party officials who are watching the whole process.

VOTE 2016 - Voter ID Decisions

"What do recent court decisions on identification requirements mean for voters?" PBS NewsHour 8/3/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Voting rights supporters in North Carolina, North Dakota and Texas have triumphed this summer over what they consider discriminatory voter-identification laws.  Since 2008, ten state legislatures have tightened such requirements or otherwise restricted how votes may be cast.  William Brangham discusses the recent rulings with Rick Hasen, professor of law at University of California, Irvine.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  Voting rights supporters have won a series of remarkable victories in the last few weeks, what they contend is a much-needed pushback against what they say are discriminatory voter-I.D. laws.

Since 2008, 10 states, almost all governed by Republican legislatures, have passed laws tightening the requirements for the kinds of I.D. you need in order to vote, or made other changes to when and how votes get cast.

But several federal courts have now ruled that some of those laws are discriminatory.  On Monday, a federal judge blocked North Dakota's voter I.D. law, saying it impinged on the rights of Native Americans.

The judge wrote — quote — “No eligible voter, regardless of their station in life, should be denied the opportunity to vote.”

Last Friday, a federal court ruled that North Carolina's new voting laws had intentionally been designed to discriminate against minorities, saying — quote — “These new provisions target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”

And then, in July, another court ruled that Texas' voter-I.D. laws also hurt minority voters, and they ordered the laws be changed before November, saying — quote — “It would be untenable to permit a law with a discriminatory effect to remain in operation for that election.”

Joining me now to wade through these changes is U.C. Irvine law Professor Richard Hasen.  He writes what's called The Election Law Blog.

So, Professor, help me understand this.  The courts have been saying, not so fast, states.

Generally speaking, what have the states been doing with their voting laws in recent years?

RICK HASEN, University of California, Irvine:  Well, most of these, but not all of these challenges involve new strict voter identification laws.

Every state has some way of identifying voters, but if you narrow the number of identifications that are acceptable, and a lot of people don't have those I.D.s, you run the risk of disenfranchising people who are otherwise eligible to vote.

And so in cases out of Wisconsin, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Texas, just in the last few weeks, we have seen those laws struck down, in the case of North Carolina, or, in the case of these other states, softened so that people who lack one of these narrow forms of I.D. can find a work-around, a different way to be able to prove their identity and cast a ballot.

ELECTIONS - Impact of Ruling on Voter ID Laws

"Impact of appeals court ruling against No. Carolina voter I.D.  laws" PBS NewsHour 7/29/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  A federal appeals court has struck North Carolina's stringent voting rules that, among other things, required voters to show I.D. before voting.  “The new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision," the judges said.  The Justice Department and the NAACP had sued the state's legislature.  William Brangham talks with Kareem Crayton, Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Now, another major ruling about voting laws that could impact the upcoming election.

A federal appeals court today struck down several of North Carolina's voting rules, ruling that they were intentionally designed to discriminate against black voters.

William Brangham has the latest.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  Before we get to the ruling, a bit of background.

Three years ago, the GOP-controlled legislature in North Carolina changed the voting rules in their state.  They passed stricter voter I.D. requirements, and cut back on things like early voting and same-day voter registration.  Those were reforms Democrats had put in place years before.

But today's ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said that those changes discriminated against black voters.  The court said — quote — “The new provisions target African-Americans with almost surgical precision,” and that these voting rules impose cures for problems that didn't exist.

Joining me now to wade through all the implications of all this is Kareem Crayton.  He is a visiting professor of law at Vanderbilt University.

Professor Crayton, thank you.

This is a very sweeping ruling by the court today.  The court basically argued that the state of North Carolina intentionally discriminated against voters.  I mean, that's a pretty rare finding, isn't it?

KAREEM CRAYTON, Vanderbilt University:  That's true.

In the modern era, most of these cases get litigated under a concern about the effects of the law, whether they were disproportionately affecting one group or the other.

This is one where the court went so far as to say that the purposes for which this law was adopted were those that prohibited — were prohibited by law, that they were racially discriminatory and targeting African-Americans in a way that the law doesn't permit.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  What was it specifically that the court found so troubling?

KAREEM CRAYTON:  Well, there were a number of circumstances under which this law was adopted that raised some serious suspicions.

First, there was the adoption of the law on the heels of a United States Supreme Court ruling, Shelby County vs. Holder, which had a number of protections against any discrimination or to allow for any discrimination protections for African-Americans, and North Carolina quickly rushed through this statute.

In addition to that, the legislature had information in front of it identifying those avenues for participation that African-Americans disproportionately tended to take advantage of.  And when you look at the kinds of things that the new law prescribed or restricted, they really cleverly matched up with those areas, those avenues that African-Americans used more often than not.

And I think the selectivity, of these restrictions ultimately raised the specter of discriminatory intent.  So, taking all of that into account, in addition to the fact, of course, that North Carolina has a pretty long history of discrimination with respect to race, and the court found more recent evidence of discrimination in the redistricting cases, this court was willing to say that there was a pretty strong claim that the purposes for this statute were some of the same considerations that were behind the 14th Amendment's prohibition of assuring that states shouldn't take race into account in creating new laws.

VOTER SUPPRESSION - Wisconsin’s Voter ID Law

The denial of voter's rights by the Republican extreme right.

This article also shows that Wisconsin Republicans want to silence any criticism of their actions by dismantling the current Government Accountability Board.  You can bet that IF they have a replacement it will be hindered from free non-partizan evaluation and reporting of government actions.

"Wisconsin’s Voter ID Law Requires an Education Campaign, Which the State Hasn’t Funded" by Sarah Smith, ProPublica 3/24/2016

The controversial law is about to get its inaugural use in a major statewide vote, Wisconsin’s April 5th primary.

On April 5, when voters cast ballots in Wisconsin’s Republican and Democratic primaries, the state’s controversial voter ID bill will face its biggest test since Governor Scott Walker signed it into law in 2011.  For the first time in a major election, citizens will be required to show approved forms of identification in order to vote.  The law mandates that the state run a public-service campaign “in conjunction with the first regularly scheduled primary and election” to educate voters on what forms of ID are acceptable.

But Wisconsin has failed to appropriate funds for the public education campaign.  The result is that thousands of citizens may be turned away from the polls simply because they did not understand what form of identification they needed to vote.

Wisconsin’s failure to fund these public-service ads comes after a clash between the Government Accountability Board, the nonpartisan agency responsible for producing voter education materials, and the Republican-controlled legislature.  In October, the agency met with Republican State Senator Mary Lazich, who was a primary sponsor of the voter ID bill in 2011, to inquire after funding and received a tepid response.

The board told Lazich that it would need $300,000 to $500,000 from the state legislature to broadcast advertisements.  The legislature had twice appropriated money for public information campaigns during the 2012 and 2014 election cycles, but the ads barely hit the airwaves before court injunctions delayed the law from going into effect.

According to Kevin Kennedy, the board’s director and general counsel, Lazich thanked the board for the information, but didn’t make any promises.  Lazich did not respond to requests for comment from ProPublica.

After the meeting, the Government Accountability Board decided against making a formal funding request to the legislature, which had already introduced a bill to dismantle the agency.

“We weren’t sure we would have a receptive audience,” Kennedy told ProPublica.

Two days after the meeting, the Wisconsin Assembly voted to replace the nonpartisan board with two partisan agencies by the end of June 2016.  Since 2012, Republicans have attacked the board after it investigated, among other things, whether Governor Walker coordinated with outside political groups during the recount battle that gripped the state.  Judicial orders stalled the investigation, and the board eventually took itself out of the probe.  Walker, cleared of wrongdoing, survived the scandal.

“I think the board had become very sensitive to the fact that the legislature had become—at least the ruling party had become—very anti-board,” Kennedy said.  “And they were like, ‘If you want us to do something tell us what to do, but we’re not going to go hat-in-hand to you.’”

Myranda Tanck, spokeswoman for State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, disputed Kennedy’s account.  She said the legislature might have appropriated money for voter education this cycle, but did not find out there was a funding gap until the board held a press conference about it in February.  “It’s something we would’ve been willing to consider,” she said.

Some researchers say confusion about what IDs are acceptable can keep voters from the polls, which is why education efforts like Wisconsin’s public service campaign are so important.  A study conducted by the University of Houston and Rice University found that half of the voters who cited not having a valid ID as the primary reason they didn’t vote in a 2014 Texas congressional district election actually had acceptable voter identification.

It’s unclear exactly how many potential voters are disenfranchised by the Wisconsin law.  In 2012, a political scientist who testified on behalf of the state in its defense of the statute estimated that between nearly 200,000 and 300,000 voters in Wisconsin did not possess a valid voter ID.  His counterpart on the plaintiffs’ side put the estimate at more than 350,000 registered voters in the state.

Volunteer groups have spent the past few months fielding calls from voters, handing out informational fliers, holding press conferences on the law and taking voters without drivers’ licenses to the DMV to get state-issued ID cards.  But they say it’s an uphill battle.  “We’ve heard from a number of people who have said they didn’t have enough information about the law,” Andrea Kaminski, the Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said.  “They’re surprised they didn’t see anything on TV, on the Internet.”

SUPREME CORT - Specialty License Plates and Voter ID Laws

"How the First Amendment affects your specialty license plate" PBS NewsHour 3/23/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Does the state of Texas have the right to issue specialty license plates featuring a Confederate flag?  Marcia Coyle of The National Law Journal fills in Gwen Ifill on the case being argued at the Supreme Court, as well as a decision to not take up a Wisconsin voter ID case.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  It was a busy day at the Supreme Court.  The justices decided not to take up a voter I.D. case out of Wisconsin, and they heard arguments over the right to issue license plates in Texas that feature a Confederate Flag.

NewsHour contributor Marcia Coyle of The National Law Journal was there again and joins me now.

Let’s start by talking about this Wisconsin case.  In 2011, it was a big deal, this idea that voters had to present photo I.D.s at the polls.  And this was considered by Democrats to be voter suppression and by Republicans a chance to beat back voter fraud.

So now this gets to the Supreme Court, and they decided to end it?

MARCIA COYLE, The National Law Journal:  Not really.

They decided not to hear the Wisconsin case, so that leaves in place the lower court decision upholding Wisconsin’s law.  But the court said nothing about the merits of the challenge to Wisconsin’s law.  And, Gwen, right now, there are a number of other cases pending and moving up the pipeline that challenge other states’ voter I.D. laws, and, in particular, Texas and North Carolina.

Texas, there was a full-blown trial and the judge in that case found intentional racial discrimination by the state of Texas, unlike in Wisconsin.  That case is now on appeal in the Fifth Circuit, and it is expected whoever loses will take it to the Supreme Court.  So as of today, we really don’t know how the justices think about some of these laws.

GWEN IFILL:  But we know that, originally, this was put on hold not because of the merits of the case, but because it was too close to an election.

MARCIA COYLE:  Exactly.  There’s a court doctrine.  The court doesn’t like to see changes to election law shortly before elections.

The Wisconsin law was going to go in effect right before midterm elections.  Now, today, the ACLU and other groups that have challenged Wisconsin’s law immediately went to the lower court to ask again that it be put on hold temporarily, because there is an April 6, I believe, election.  And, again, they haven’t had time to implement the changes.

GWEN IFILL:  Right.  OK.

Well, let’s move on to the arguments of the case today, because it seems like we never get away from a debate, periodically, politically, legally, about the Confederate Flag, this time on a license plate.

SUPREME COURT - Considers Gerrymandering

"Supreme Court considers line between racial and partisan gerrymandering" PBS NewsHour 11/12/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  We turn now to Supreme Court arguments today on the intersection of race and politics.

Alabama Democrats are arguing that the state legislature has packed minorities and Democrats into too few districts, in violation of voting rights laws.  But that’s open to interpretation, and it fell to the high court to tackle that today.

And, as always, Marcia Coyle was in the chamber for “The National Law Journal” and for us.

So tell me about this intersection and how it played out today.

MARCIA COYLE, The National Law Journal:  OK.

Well, after the 2010 census, the Republican-led Alabama legislature engaged in redrawing state legislative districts, just like other states were doing, following the census.  The plan they came up with was challenged by the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus and the Alabama Democratic Conference, who claimed that the plan was what we called a racial gerrymander because it packed into existing majority black districts more majority voters in order to make the surrounding districts more white and more likely to vote Republican.

GWEN IFILL:  Now, when we talk gerrymander, that is generally a very elaborate way of drawing districts for certain purposes.  Does it matter more constitutionally or according to the law whether these lines are drawn for racial reasons or for other reasons?

MARCIA COYLE:  It does.  It matters a lot.  There are two really background principles here to keep in mind.

First, the Supreme Court in its voting rights decisions has said that race cannot be the predominant factor in redistricting.

GWEN IFILL:  It can be a factor, but not the main factor.

MARCIA COYLE:  Right.  It can be a factor, but not the main one.  And if it is the main one, it violates the Constitution.

U.S. ELECTIONS - Cynical Attempt to Suppress Voting

"Why Voter ID Laws Aren’t Really about Fraud" by Sarah Childress, PBS Frontline 10/20/2014

Voters going to the polls in Texas starting this week will have to show one of a few specific forms of photo ID under a controversial new law upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court over the weekend.

The Texas law — along with 15 other voter ID laws passed since 2010 — was billed as a way to prevent people from impersonating eligible voters at the polls.

But voter ID laws don’t address what appears to be a more common source of voter fraud:  mail-in absentee ballots.

A FRONTLINE analysis of voting laws nationwide found that only six of the 31 states that require ID at the polls apply those standards to absentee voters, who are generally whiter and older than in-person voters.  And two states with strict photo ID policies for in-person voters — Rhode Island and Georgia — have recently passed bills that allow anyone to mail in a ballot.

Voter fraud generally rarely happens.  When it does, election law experts say it happens more often through mail-in ballots than people impersonating eligible voters at the polls.  An analysis by News21, a journalism project at Arizona State University, found 28 cases of voter fraud convictions since 2000.  Of those, 14 percent involved absentee ballot fraud.  Voter impersonation, the form of fraud that voter ID laws are designed to prevent, made up only 3.6 percent of those cases.  (Other types included double voting, the most common form, at 25 percent, and felons voting when they were prohibited from doing so.  But neither of those would be prevented by voter ID laws, either.)

Mark Obenshain, a Republican Virginia state senator who was the primary sponsor of his state’s voter ID law, said that lawmakers tried to balance improving security with maintaining access to the ballot for elderly and disabled people.

“There are good arguments that there are gaps with absentee ballots,” he said.  “But the issue is, how can we close that gap without unduly burdening the right to vote?”  Obenshain said that these voters might not have access to a scanner or Xerox machine to make a copy of their ID.

And, because absentee ballots must be sent to a voter’s registered address, they are still relatively secure, Obenshain said.  “It doesn’t warrant making the voters jump through unnecessary hoops.”

Who Votes Absentee?

Absentee voters tend to be older and whiter than in-person voters.  In 2012, nearly half, or 46 percent, of mail-in voters were aged 60 and older, and more than 75 percent were white, according to an analysis by Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida who tracks demographic trends in voting.  Older white Americans generally are more likely to vote Republican.

African-Americans, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, are less likely to use mail-in ballots. Although they make up about 13 percent of the population, only 8 percent voted by mail in 2012.

Either way, most states — nine — of the 16 that have passed stricter voter ID laws since 2010 only allow voters to mail in ballots if they have an excuse, such as an illness, disability or old age.

Who Is Impacted by Voter ID Laws?

Laws that require photo ID at the polls vary, but the strictest laws limit the forms of acceptable documentation to only a handful of cards.  For example, in Texas, voters must show one of seven forms of state or federal-issue photo ID, with a valid expiration date:  A driver’s license, a personal ID card issued by the state, a concealed handgun license, a military ID, citizenship certificate, or a passport.  The name on the ID must exactly match the one on the voter rolls.

African-Americans and Latinos are more likely to lack one of these qualifying IDs, according to several estimates.  Even when the state offers a free photo ID, these voters, who are disproportionately low-income, may not be able to procure the underlying documents, such as a birth certificate, to obtain one.

In Texas, for example, challengers to the law cited an African-American grandmother who could not afford the $25 to purchase her birth certificate to get an ID, and an elderly African-American veteran and longtime voter who was turned away at the polls in 2013 despite having three types of ID, because none qualified under the new law.

And new research from the Government Accountability Office, an independent agency that prepares reports for members of Congress, suggests that voter ID laws are having an impact at the polls.  Turnout dropped among both young people and African-Americans in Kansas and Tennessee after new voter ID requirements took effect in 2012, the study found.

Six of the 16 states that have passed voter ID laws since 2010 have a documented history of discriminating against minority voters.  All but one of those states’ laws were put in place after the Supreme Court overturned a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that required them to seek approval from the Justice Department for any voting-law changes.

Courts have so far blocked three ID laws.  A state judge struck down Pennsylvania’s law earlier this year, determining that it discriminated against low-income and minority voters.  Two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Wisconsin’s from taking effect for this election, and last week, a state court declared Arkansas’ voter ID law unconstitutional.  Lawsuits are currently pending against similar laws in North Carolina and Alabama, though they won’t be decided before the November elections.

Voter ID laws have all been sponsored by Republicans and passed overwhelmingly by Republican legislatures.  A conservative U.S. circuit judge, Richard Posner, in a recent scathing critique of these laws, calling the expressed concern about fraud a “a mere fig leaf” and that they instead “appear to be aimed at limiting voting by minorities, particularly blacks.”

“There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud,” Posner wrote, “…and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens.”

Obenshain, the Virginia senator, said his law wasn’t about keeping voters from the polls.  “There’s only one class of people who are going to be discouraged from voting, and that’s fraudulent voters.”