In 2014, Wisconsin passed a strict photo ID law requiring voters to show specific, restrictive forms of identification at the polls. Only a few thousand votes separate President-elect Donald Trump and Secretary Hillary Clinton. It has been estimated that 300,000 registered voters in the state lacked the strict forms of voter ID required. Wisconsin’s voter turnout was at its lowest level in two decades. Voter turnout in Milwaukee, where 70 percent of the state’s African American population lives, decreased by 13 percent; this meant 41,000 fewer votes. Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Neil Albrecht reported that the voter ID restrictions depressed turnout, saying “We saw some of the greatest declines in districts we projected would have most trouble with voter ID requirements.”
This was the real rigging of this election. It had nothing to with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz or emails, but it did have something to do with the media and its editorial choices about what was worth covering.
They knew what they were doing.
Sometimes I think we should embrace voter ID. I know the arguments against it, but I find them unconvincing.
And I’m alright with it. That’s what Cook County does and there aren’t these kinds of issues. Also same day registration needs to be mandated and national. Too many people still don’t know where and how to run register to vote.
And accept any other ID within reason.
Some voters don’t have a mailing address — and SCOTUS has been clear that homelessness doesn’t mean voicelessness.
Similarly, making sure that government agencies keep up with the population isn’t easy. In Boston, lots of folks move on September 1, and then we have a primary a few weeks later. What happens when they update their address in the voter guide but haven’t updated their drivers license yet?
In my mind, the biggest challenge with Voter ID is that voting is tied to where we sleep at night, and there are loads of Americans who move around quite a bit. They just so happen to skew young persons and persons of color, so that even if fair-minded social justice types were to roll out the voter ID program, it would still skew the results.
If we have the votes to ensure that the GOP can’t game Voter ID, we almost certainly have the votes to simply prohibit voter ID.
Ever fallen behind on a credit card bill? They find you.
Why can’t our government do that, in 2016?
Do you understand that many of the people we’re talking don’t have bank accounts, never mind credit cards?
I can tell you that there are large segments of our working-class population that credit card agencies are NOT able to find.
I did move. On September the first I had an entirely different address from that which I had on August the thirty-first. From one town in Massachusetts to another town in Massachusetts. My wife and I voted in our new town without incident and without ever once showing an ID. I registered in my new town and they called the old and de-listed me. That’s beacuse Massachusetts takes voting, and its citizens who vote, seriously. That should be the standard, not an inquisitorial de facto suspicion…
This was widely reported and discussed here. Are you really unclear about what it means, or are you making yet another argument that suppressing black and minority votes is ok?
For convenience, here are the Wisconsin requirements:
What is “unconvincing” about the many reports like this?
For example (emphasis mine):
Donald Trump won Wisconsin by 1,409,467 to 1,382,210 — a difference of only 27,257 votes. The city of Milwaukee alone has about six hundred thousand residents. The racial issues of Milwaukee are well-documented and well-reported.
What additional data would you find convincing?
I’m pretty sure you wrote:
“What does this mean? … specific, restrictive forms of identification”
Then I’m pretty sure you wrote “Sometimes I think we should embrace voter ID. I know the arguments against it, but I find them unconvincing.”
How have I mischaracterized what you just wrote?
Or at least implying I tolerate racism.
I don’t have to tolerate that. I will not tolerate that.
The plain fact is that the voterID requirements that you say you “sometimes think we should embrace” are racist. They are designed to suppress minority votes, and they worked in this election. That’s why the GOP wanted them, that’s why they’re written the way they are, and that’s why the results are as they are.
I’m telling you that you just expressed support for regulations that are racist. I think it’s your job to tolerate responses like mine if you’re going to publish comments like yours.
Driver’s licenses?
Credit cards? (I know not everyone has one.)
Social Security cards?
Liquor IDs for people over 21 who don’t drive?
Health club IDs?
Stop & Shop / CVS / whatever store cards?
ACLU membership cards?
NRA member ID cards?
WBUR member ID cards?
Museum of Science member ID cards?
Are ANY of these racist?
WHY are voter ID cards racist? Yes everyone is different and some people are harder to reach, but why can’t everyone who’s registered to vote (so they got that far) have a voter ID card?
Now, PLEASE, before you reply: The fact that Republicans embrace ID because it fits with their notions of society does not invalidate the idea.
And my willingness to consider it doesn’t make me a racist. I think the bar should be pretty high before we toss around such invective, don’t you?
Any attempt to suppress minority voting is racist.
This thread isn’t about abstract things that might happen someday. It is instead about the concrete and, yes, racist voterID laws that played a large role in changing the outcome of this election.
I think the bar for discussing racism and sexism is already far too high. We just normalized a man, by putting him in the Oval Office, who brags about the sexual assaults he has committed against dozens of women.
In my view, the bar in talking about racism is FAR too high already.
I offered a list of concrete things.
I really don’t know what you’re saying anymore. I resent being called a racist, but I thank you for not denying it.
Which of your list (besides drivers licenses) is acceptable identification in a voterID state?
My assertion is not that driver’s licenses are racist. It is, instead, that requiring drivers licence to vote IS racist.
How do you react to poll taxes and literacy tests?
WHY is it racist to ask someone to provide some proof that they are who they say they are?
I don’t deny that this COULD be abused and used by racists. But if it were done everywhere, there would be less opportunity to do that.
I’m pretty sure I’m recognized at three different libraries, but I need a card to check things out.
If we could provide photo IDs to absolutely everyone in an incredibly low cost and frictionless way, then sure, we could require them for voting. The problem is that we do not and cannot provide photo IDs in such a way.
So, the efforts to require photo IDs for voting all have the EFFECT of negatively impacting certain populations – generally poor and minority and voters. It also appears to be likely that the INTENT of these efforts is to lower turnout among these populations. All of this as a response to ZERO evidence of widespread, or even localized, voter fraud. The Republicans pushing for these laws know exactly what they are doing
Questions like “why can’t we” usually come from a place of privilege (often white) not understanding what the impact of a policy could really mean.
In isolation the ID issue is not racist, but in context and understanding what it really means and understanding the effect and the intent and the laws, they are decidedly racist.
Wouldn’t it behoove us to perform greater outreach to this population? Couldn’t voter ID be one way of getting there?
I’d wager that we know about most people, one way or another. Maybe they’re unemployed, but they’re getting unemployment, or someone in their family is.
Maybe they have a crappy job someplace where they’re not making a living wage. But they likely have an employee ID, right?
It seems to me that, if this is the population we’re failing — and according to everyone in this thread, we are failing them — that voter ID is a good, empowering means of reaching them. Get them registered, give them an ID.
It is not racist to ask someone to prove they are who they say they are. It is, however completely unnecessary. Various studies have found something on the order of 10-20 apparent issues out of hundreds of millions of votes cast.
Why was it racist to ask someone to prove that they are able to read well enough to understand the text of the ballot?
We know that a significantly larger portion of minority populations do not have drivers licenses. We know, in the south, that a significant number of blacks do not have birth certificates (because birth certificates were routinely not issued for blacks during the Jim Crow era). We know, from a large variety of sources, that demanding a driver’s license will, for a disproportionate number of minorities, result in their being unable to vote.
How is it NOT racist to impose a requirement for voting that we know disproportionally hurts minorities?
It seems to me that you are attempting rhetorical gymnastics to avoid the plain truth on the table — just like literacy tests in the past, THESE voterID requirements were created to suppress minority votes, they did suppress minority votes, and there is very strong evidence that they succeeded.
We have elected a president and preserved legislative majorities that are markedly more hostile towards minorities than would have been elected had these regulations not been in place.
If that isn’t “racist”, I’m not sure what would be.
Do minorities inherently have less need to drive than white people? Literacy tests were racist because they were enforced in a discriminatory fashion, not because they were racist per se. They were also irrelevant. In fact they often weren’t really literacy tests. (Google Louisiana literacy test 1964 to see what I mean; it was more of a brain teaser which is fun to try, but had no business being used to determine eligibility to vote.) I’m open to IDs because I’m procedurally picky and just like all my I’s dotted and T’s crossed on general principles. Also, my own experience with ID is once it PROTECTED my right to vote since I had been moved to the inactive list, so I have a soft spot for it based on that too.
People who are too poor to own cars don’t need, and often don’t have, drivers licenses. Poverty correlates very strongly to race.
An enormous number of inner-city Americans do not have bank accounts, credit cards, drivers licenses, landlines (many of them lack phones), or any of the other niceties privileged whites take for granted. There is a reason why “payday loan” vendors are concentrated in minority neighborhoods.
These voterID laws essentially punish voters for being poor. It is no accident that the result has a significantly disproportionate impact on blacks.
I’m not clear about how you could ever have been subject to a voterID requirement here in MA — I’m under the impression that we are not and never have been a voterID state.
So this isn’t about race at all, but class.
We know, and have known for decades, that poverty affects minorities disproportionally. It is very much harder to live in suburbia or exurbia without a drivers license (and a car).
These are specious arguments that are unsupported by facts, logic, or even common sense.
I’m sorry, but there is only one common thread in these arguments, and that common thread is either a desire to disenfranchise minority voters or a pronounced willingness to ignore it.
…I had been moved the inactive voter list (because I neglected to return my city census form that year), so they wanted to verify who I was for reactivating me, which to be honest seems reasonable. The amusing part was that is was the 2012 state primary with the only contested race being Governor’s Council. I vote in every election, including ones like that which are barely worth it and including the most recent election in that same precinct. Given that, and my activism, membership on the DSC, etc. I found it, shall we say “interesting” that I of all people could be called an “inactive voter”.
The way that these restrictions work is seemingly relatively clear, as indicated in the original post. I have never really quite understood why the impact is so disparate, unless only some IDs are checked at the voting booth.
Going to the RMV is pretty low on the life skill scale, and it seems odd that it seems to be beyond the capacity of so many Dem voters. Poor non-minorities have the same issues, and yet get their license or ID. Or else their ID is not checked at the poll, which is another issue.
DMV’s may be relatively accessible in Massachusetts, but read SomervilleTom’s post above about how inaccessible they are in Wisconsin. In the states that have enacted strict voter ID laws, they are also, for the most part, frequently cutting back the number of hours and the accessibility of DMV. They’ve made it extraordinarily difficult, even for the middle class to get drivers licenses or IDs.
I don’t think there is any such thing, anywhere, as a convenient trip to the DMV. It always takes hours, but it always takes hours for everyone, and yet only a portion of the population has a huge problem with it. But having a driver’s license or “non-driver ID” is pretty darn high on the life skills necessary to exist in the modern world.
Also, these seems like a something that could be countered better than it is. There is already plenty of voter organization in these minority neighborhoods. Why can’t that infrastructure be used to help these people get these documents, which will be quite useful to them in all kinds of circumstances unrelated to voting?
It seems a little like a hitter saying, “Fine, you want to play the shift against me all the time? I’ll go opposite field for awhile to negate the advantage.”
Life in the inner city is not a baseball game.
The population we are talking about struggles to get food every day. Many of them avoid banks and utility bills (for a variety of reasons). Many of them haven’t ever learned to drive, never mind bought a car. There is absolutely no reason for them to have a drivers license, and a surprisingly large number of reasons for them NOT to have one.
In the deep south, many blacks do not have the necessary documents to even obtain a voterID or a driver’s license. Many states in the deep south did not issue birth certificates for blacks during the Jim Crow era. Many birth certificates for blacks that were issued were not kept or maintained. This was not accidental — the point then, as now, was to prevent blacks from voting.
When you write “having a driver’s license or “non-driver ID” is pretty darn high on the life skills necessary to exist in the modern world”, the “modern world” you describe is an overwhelmingly white and middle class world. You perhaps inadvertently spotlight the issue: the “modern world” you describe excludes blacks and minorities, except as underpaid and overworked providers of menial labor.
Voting in America was once restricted to white male property-owners. These laws strive to return to that era.
…is to make sure the modern world isn’t reserved for the white middle class.
Nobody needs to drive. Most of us are able to live a higher standard of living because we can drive.
To answer your question:
— Slate
I wish that were true. It isn’t.
If you went blind tomorrow, would you cease to exist? On the hierarchy of needs, driving isn’t a basic need. It’s somewhere between a psychological need and a self-fulfillment need.
There’s no doubt that, for most Americans, their life is better because they can drive. But that’s not need.
There are over 1 million blind Americans (source). They all manage to live their lives without the need to drive. There are millions more adults who lack the mental or physical ability to drive despite having adequate sight. They all rely on other people driving, either directly (caretaker) or indirectly (bus driver, UPS driver).
Don’t confuse “need” with “need if I want to maintain my current lifestyle,” because that simply isn’t the same thing.
n/t
…but try living my life without being able to drive. My commute is relatively short, but not the way any buses go. I could not get to most shopping, church, activities, or work without a car. Yes, I managed in college in DC without one, but that means I almost never made it outside the reach of the Metro. Of course I wouldn’t cease to exist if I went blind, but it would mean a family member would have to pick up the slack and you know, DRIVE me everywhere. In the first world it’s on par with access to other forms of technology and assumes you are not a hermit.
The point is that you are able to drive, you are able own a car, and you are able to live your life.
There are a great number of people, especially minorities, who are not nearly so fortunate.
None of the things you listed are constitutional rights. I don’t have a constitutional right to drive. Or get credit.
I do have a constitutional right to vote. So this is comparing apples and oranges.
I have the constitutional right to have a gun, most on here seem pretty happy setting up as many hurdles to that right as they can. Before you talk about having a gun means a person might die, having a vote and voting for an isolationist or an interventionist president, who has his fingers on the triggers of weapons from drones to nuclear bombs means the process deserves to have at least as much scrutiny as an individual getting a gun.
You’re not wrong, but I think there is an important difference. Our nation has been on a constant, 200+ year long arc to expand the franchise. Voting is more fundamental to our democracy than even the Bill of Rights.
No right is absolute. The tension with gun ownership is private right versus public health, and that tension is seen every day. But what is the tension with voter ID? There is no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud at the voting booth in modern elections. There’s no disease, but the proposed medicine has side effects that, in fact, impact racial minorities more severely than whites.
If there was not substantial, verifiable, consistent evidence that voter ID suppresses black and Hispanic vote more than white vote, I think your comparison would be more helpful.
I guess that the editors removed the comment I replied to.
It’s fine with me to remove this as well.
While Michigan has voter id, all you have to do if you don’t have one is sign an affidavit saying you are who you say you are and they let you vote.
I’m not a scientist, but if turnout in Milwaukee is down, and turnout in Detroit is down, maybe voter id is not the reason.
We are talking about Wisconsin, not Michigan. Milwaukee most certainly is not Detroit.
Perhaps, since you’re not a scientist, you might pay rather more attention to what people who ARE scientists say about the effect of these laws.
Point us to the scientists discussing these laws.
You might start here.
The point is that this has been extensively studied by researchers, most of whom are scientists in the sense that they understand statistical processes, quantitative analysis of data, processes for normalizing results to account for various factors, and so on.
There really isn’t any doubt about the evidence. It is what we do with that evidence that is in question.
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/elj.2013.0209?journalCode=elj
(PDF) http://pages.ucsd.edu/~zhajnal/page5/documents/voterIDhajnaletal.pdf
Your first link, above, is about turnout.
I don’t doubt that the portions you emphasized are true — what those portions do not address is the number of voters who were disenfranchised. It is irrelevant to the question of why these laws are racist.
Perhaps you confused the text you cited in your second link. Here is the abstract (emphasis mine):
Let’s just run an instant replay on that last excerpt:
The analysis shows that strict photo identification laws have a differentially negative impact on the turnout of Hispanics, Blacks, and mixed-race Americans in primaries and general elections. Voter ID laws skew democracy in favor of whites and those on the political right.
It seems to me that this is, in fact, a very strong repudiation of voterID laws.
And they say they can’t prove a causal connection.
I agree with you that they repudiate voter ID laws, but they conclude that more data is needed.
Which part of the sentence I quoted can be interpreted any way other than proving a causal connection?
Some of them suggest that more data is needed, many of them older. We have the data. I’ll ask you the same question I ask climate change “skeptics” — is there a level of proof you’ll accept?
n/t
You don’t make a connection? In fact black voting was down across the country.
http://www.phillytrib.com/news/black-voter-turnout-a-look-at-the-numbers/article_49d1aed9-76be-550e-b063-15ad7639dc97.html
The question on the table is whether voterID laws depressed voter turnout in the states that have them.
There are any number of reasons why black turnout was depressed in Philadelphia, some are speculated on in the link you cite:
The focus of this thread is the impact of voterID laws. Black voter turnout is a different question.
… isn’t helpful.
Turnout was down in two places, but one of them had voter ID. So you say, “We’re talking about voter ID.” Fair enough, we are — but it IS relevant that turnout was down elsewhere.
Will you PLEASE reread the thread-starter? Here, for your convenience, is the original text (emphasis mine):
This post is about voterID laws. If you want to talk about turnout, start a thread that does so.
Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in Wisconsin by about 27,000 votes. The estimates offered in thread-starter are that TEN TIMES that many voters were kept away from the polls. Even the lower turnout (cited as 41,000 votes) is factored in, it’s still an enormous factor.
I don’t understand why you so strenuously argue this if your mind is as open as you say it is. The data is clear, as is the outcome.
If 270,000 people would have voted except for the voter id rules, why aren’t they ever quoted? I’ve never seen an article (except for a stray one or two people) that starts listing people. 270,000 people is half the population of Boston desiring something and not getting it, yet somehow they’re invisible.
Blaming the results of this election on voter repression reminds me of all the people I know blaming Romney’s loss on voter fraud.
I’ve cited sources, I’ve cited data, I’ve answered the objections (as have many others). Why do YOU think the GOP was so passionate about putting these laws in place? Maybe the number only 120,000 instead of 270,000. In an election with a margin of 27,000 it still swings the outcome. I have a very hard time avoiding the conclusion that you don’t believe these numbers because you don’t believe the numbers.
Occam’s razor says to me that the simplest solution that explains the data is that the GOP intentionally put regulations in place that would suppress minority votes and swing the election their way. The courts in PA ruled exactly that in voiding the laws (the damage was apparently done).
I am persuaded. You clearly are not.
it seems to me, is the assumption that because we require ID’s for lesser “rights,” such as taking home library books or drinking alcohol, we must also require ID’s for voting — indeed, if we do not require an ID to vote we are somehow demeaning that fundamental right.
However, we know that without the existence of library cards, books–and entire libraries–will soon disappear, and we know that without the existence of ID’s that prove one’s age, kids will buy and consume alcohol to everyone’s peril.
By contrast, we do not know that requiring ID’s to vote prevents voter fraud (we don’t even have reason to think the problem of voter fraud exists). So why do we want to burden that right for some people whom we know are already “disenfranchised” in many other respects?
Although this may seem slightly counterintuitive, fundamental rights are not the ones that are important enough for government to regulate — they are the ones that are important enough for the government NOT to regulate if there’s no reason to do so.
Then why do we require registration?
Which state doesn’t?
n/t
Just because you can no longer drive doesn’t mean that your appearance, name, or address change.
I do not believe we have a problem with voter fraud. However, the people who just won the election do.
I do believe that the fairer the election, the better off we are. I (still) find the arguments against voter ID unconvincing. As one of the links I posted upthread notes, voter ID has not been adequately studied in isolation. Its impact on elections may be overstated.
Yes, the impact it does have is disproportionately on the poor, and therefore disproportionately on minorities. But this fact alone points to our failure at reaching these people. They should be registered and highly motivated to vote. THEY CARRY OTHER IDs (most at least). I simply reject the notion that carrying an ID to the polls is some sort of special hardship. If you drove there, you have a car; if you’re a shut-in and called a campaign for a ride to the polls, you have a phone and therefore a phone bill.
Yes voting is different from other aspects of society. Why exactly this rules out having an ID for it escapes me though.
I don’t know the answer, but I think it’s worth considering. We’re supposed to make government work, and we do make elections work. Why is ID that big a change?
Nobody argues that bringing the ID to polls is a hardship. It is having the ID to bring that is the issue.
We know that improper manipulation of voters rolls is a MUCH larger problem than voters claiming to be somebody they aren’t. I think the people that just won the election enacted these laws in order to suppress minority vote — I think voter fraud is thin rationalization that falls apart on inspection.
If voter fraud were the motivator, then these laws would have been discarded as soon as the evidence of how microscopic the problem is was presented.
ID is that big a change because it (together with shamelessly partisan behavior of the director of the FBI) caused Donald Trump to be elected.
Wouldn’t voter ID help with that? If not, what would?
The improper manipulation of voter rolls causes properly-registered voters to be unable to vote. Those voters can bring all the documentation they want to the polling place, they’ll still be denied.
The question of what would help address those issues is important. Some of those conversations took place in the aftermath of the 2000 election, when the abuses of the Florida GOP were exposed.
I enthusiastically agree that THESE abuses be investigated and corrected.