Timothy J. Ryan, Research Assistant, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project

April 18, 2007

The controversy over laws that require citizens to present identification in order to vote returned to national attention last week with a prominent report cataloguing steps that the Election Assistance Commission took to lessen the splash of a study examining voter fraud in the United States. Where the original study concluded that there is “widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud,” the version revised by the EAC finds that “there is a great deal of debate” about the prevalence of voter fraud and made other adjustments to temper the findings.

Voter ID laws tend to invite rancor because partisans on both sides of the aisle believe any changes could affect the outcome of various elections. Republicans generally express concern that lax requirements open the door for elections to be stolen by duplicate voters and the like, while Democrats point to a lack of evidence about the extent of fraud and fear that identification requirements dissuade a large number of poor and minority voters – traditionally Democratic constituencies – from voting. Many people in these demographics, the argument goes, do not have drivers’ licenses or comparable identification and can experience difficulty in acquiring them. Further, even the identifications that some states provide for free require documentation – birth certificates or the like – that themselves can require high fees. In this way, ID requirements are compared to modern poll taxes.

A balanced take on the situation is made more difficult by a terrible paucity of convincing evidence regarding both the extent of fraud and the degree to which ID requirements depress turnout. Timothy Vercellotti and David Anderson have released one study suggesting a small negative influence on turnout, but they will be the first to admit that good evidence is hard to come by and that their conclusions are hardly definitive. Similarly, Tova Wang, Spencer Overton, and others point to the fact that relatively few examples of voter fraud have been reported, but skeptics can always respond with the valid concern that fraud, being a criminal activity, is undetectable whenever it is successful. We only know about fraud when it is caught; who knows how much fraud escapes our attention? And even if fraud is uncommon today, could it not become a problem tomorrow?

Aside from the difficulty of balancing integrity and accessibility, proponents of voter ID laws argue that identification requirements will help to restore the flagging confidence in election administration (see Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita’s Q&A here) and that the standards are needed to bring U.S. practices on par with the rest of the world; most advanced democracies require identification of some kind (though the onus of providing the ID oftentimes lies on the government).

Perhaps there are a few items within the debate upon which both sides of the aisle can agree. First, voter ID laws would not prevent all kinds of fraud or even the most consequential. Requiring an ID might prevent impersonation of other individuals at the polling places, but it would not, for example, prevent the stuffing of ballot boxes, either in the old, literal sense or the modern electronic equivalent: the subversion of machine software through hacking.

Second, it is difficult to perpetrate fraud – at least the kind of fraud that IDs are designed to prevent – in the volume that would be necessary to swing an election. Impersonating a voter would require either falsifying registration forms to place fictional voters on the rolls or stealing the persona of someone who had already registered. In the first case, an election thief would typically have to contrive fake addresses, a kind of fraud that could well be discovered if perpetrated on a large scale. Similarly, stealing the identity of a real person would require an assurance that the victim had not already voted. Otherwise, a fraudulent voter could be caught red-handed.

Furthermore, in-person fraud would require the perpetrators to travel to enough polling stations on Election Day so as to cast a significant number of fraudulent votes. How many polling places could a single person visit in one day? Fifteen? Perhaps twenty? Such a small number of fraudulent votes is unlikely to change the outcome of an election, and so it seems that any successful scheme would have to employ a group of individuals. Of course, as the number of perpetrators increases, so does the probability of being caught. How many of even the most avid partisans would undertake the formidable risk of jail time in order to marginally increase the likelihood of their favored candidate winning? In many ways, the kind of fraud that an ID requirement would prevent is akin to the counterfeiting of nickels and dimes: high risk for low reward.

Finally, any effort to neutralize voter fraud without a sober consideration of absentee voting would be sorely incomplete. Absentee voting, which routinely constitutes 30 percent or more of the votes cast in some states (such as California), requires no proof of ID and is very much the Achilles heel of election security. Because a single individual could theoretically acquire hundreds of absentee ballots and complete them in private, it is the method most likely to facilitate wholesale voter fraud. If fraud through impersonation is analogous to counterfeiting nickels and dimes, absentee voting could be the equivalent of counterfeiting $100 bills. It is for this reason that efforts to encourage absentee voting, such as allowing absentee voting without an excuse, should be considered with great caution.

Nevertheless, if the states do want to employ some kind of ID requirement, they should take steps to minimize the possibility that ID laws will prevent legitimate votes from being cast. For instance, Virginia allows ID-less voters to cast a ballot as long as they are registered and sign an affidavit affirming their identity. It is a practice not altogether satisfactory to hard-liners on either side, but a reasonable middle ground between security and accessibility. Administrators might even consider strengthening this practice by allowing ID-less voters to check a box indicating that they do not own an acceptable identification. If checked, that individual would receive an ID application in the mail. He or she could then submit the application along with a utility bill or other proof of identity in order to receive a free voter identification card. To reinforce the affidavit’s status as a short-term fix, voters who habitually show up to Election Day without an ID might eventually lose the privilege of identifying by affidavit.

There remains room for spirited debate about the merits of voter ID laws. One could plausibly favor them for reasons of confidence and facility of recordkeeping while still denying that large-scale fraud exists at all. Still, hastily implemented ID laws could disenfranchise legitimate voters to a far greater degree than they would prevent illegitimate voting. For this reason, lawmakers who genuinely seek to administer elections with an eye towards inclusiveness as well as integrity should consider the imposition of greater requirements with the utmost care.

Timothy J. Ryan can be reached at tryan@aei.org

Viewpoint is an occasional feature in which members of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project staff analyze various election reform issues.