Election Day impersonation, an impetus for voter ID laws, a rarity, data show

Many voter ID supporters argue that the measures are needed to ensure the integrity of elections, no matter how many violations have occurred.

“Whether you have proof of it or not, what in the heavens is wrong with showing an ID at polls?” said Bill Denny, a Republican state representative in Mississippi who sponsored his state’s voter ID bill. That bill is awaiting pre-clearance by the Justice Department, a process some states with a history of discrimination must go through before making electoral changes.

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Civil rights and voting rights activists condemn the ID laws as a way of disenfranchising minorities, students, senior citizens and the disabled.

“It’s simply a new big burden on the backs of people who just want to have their voices heard during elections,” said Eddie Hailes, managing director and general counsel of the Advancement Project, a civil rights group challenging voter ID laws in Texas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

The Justice Department objected to the Texas voter ID law — a piece of which U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. likened to a poll tax — on the grounds that it would disproportionately affect minorities and the poor.

The state preemptively sued the Justice Department for the right to implement the law, and arguments were heard by a three-judge panel in Washington in July. A verdict is expected within the next month.

Indiana and Georgia were the first states to pass strict voter ID laws, in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

Efforts accelerated markedly after the elections of 2010, when Republicans took over statehouses across the country. Since then, Republican-dominated legislatures — with the exception of Rhode Island, where Democrats passed a photo ID law — have considered 62 ID bills.

Nine states — Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin — passed stricter voter ID laws, though only the Kansas, Pennsylvania and Tennessee measures are scheduled to be in effect by November.

The Pennsylvania law has drawn considerable attention, particularly after Republican Mike Turzai, Pennsylvania’s House majority leader, said in a video that has since gone viral that the state’s new law “is going to allow Governor [Mitt] Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania — done.”

According to Pennsylvania state officials, as many as 759,000 people, about 9 percent of the state’s 8.2 million registered voters, do not have the identification that will be required to vote. The Justice Department is investigating the ID law to determine whether it violates the 1965 federal Voting Rights Act by discriminating against minorities, according to a letter sent to Pennsylvania officials.

In a pretrial stipulation, Pennsylvania officials said they would offer no evidence that “in-person voter fraud has in fact occurred in Pennsylvania or elsewhere” or that “in-person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of a Photo ID law.”

Pennsylvania officials, who responded to the News21 public-record requests, also reported no cases of Election Day voter impersonation fraud since 2000.