I don’t have an issue with the concept of voter ID’s. I have an issue with how a certain party keeps trying to implement them. Scheduling a voter ID law to go into effect just before an election is a strategy that’s been used in a few states. Why not pass the law to go into effect a few years later so everyone has sufficient time to acquire the ID? Why not ensure there is a system in place to ensure those that do not already have state issued ID’s can get them?
The consequences of voter ID laws IMHO are overblown on the left. I’d prefer more logical ways be presented and a compromise be made but that’s rather difficult to do when those are the right have gone as far as to say the goal of voter ID laws are to stop people who may vote Democratic from voting.
Well…I did point to one instance of actual voting fraud… But now it turns out that the proposed solutions to the problem wouldn’t have detected this instance.
So we have a problem that the solution doesn’t solve…and a solution to a problem we don’t know exists in the first place.
This is why there was a lengthy Pit thread on the subject.
I said this could vary enormously because every situation is different (“fact-dependent,” as the lawyers say), such that no case can be cited as typical.
Per the Laffey Matrix, the going rate for attorneys in the DC/Baltimore area is $400-700/hour. That’s higher than is typical in my neck of the woods, and less than you would expect to pay in New York or Los Angeles. Private investigators typically run in the $40-100/hour range, again dependent on location, experience, and kind of work needed.
Let’s say your lawyer spends three hours meeting with you, reviewing and marshaling your documentation, and drafting your petition, plus another hour in court. At $400/hour, that’s $1600 right there. You’ll also likely have some paralegal and copy fees, plus the filing fee (currently $195 in my jurisdiction, but can vary widely). You’re getting close to two grand here, and you haven’t paid anything at all for whoever is actually doing the research and chasing down papers (maybe a paralegal, or the lawyer’s investigator, or a PI, or the lawyer him/herself), nor have you paid your own expenses to get to the hearing or any fees/expenses for any witnesses.
Maybe you can handle the paperwork without needing to go to court. Maybe you only need an hour or two of the lawyer’s time, or are sufficiently skilled that you can represent yourself and do all of your own research. Maybe you need twenty or thirty hours of attorney time plus multiple hearings plus witness and deposition fees plus PI charges plus etc., etc., etc. There are just too many variables here to posit an “average” case.
The question I asked, about finding utility bills and income tax papers, was actually somewhat tricky. If you don’t already have your mother’s tax returns, you are unlikely to be able to obtain them from the IRS or state tax departments, because old returns are routinely destroyed. (The IRS, e.g., usually has them for seven to ten years.) Likewise, most utility companies are not going to have very old records because they don’t need to keep them for business reasons. If the records no longer exist, all of the time and money in the world won’t make them reappear.
As are Washington and Colorado. In Oregon you have to sign the envelope the ballot is returned in and they check that signature against the one from your registration. This probably is more effective at fraud suppression than voter ID requirements.
About that Texas case of registering in two places. In Oregon that probably wouldn’t happen. Back in the 90s, I moved from one Oregon county to another and was told I didn’t need to cancel my first registration. There’s a place on the registration where you indicate where your previous registration was. Apparently, they communicate between counties here (wow! such a novel concept).
In the UK and Ireland, voting fraud usually involves, either voting for dead people, or using postal votes and voting for family groups without giving them any choice. We are not require to show ID. Although we have a card, we can vote without it - just giving name and address to be ticked off the list.
I remember being surprised that, in a secret ballot, all slips are individually numbered and that is connected to the voter’s name. This is supposed to help combat fraud.
Before we start totaling up fees, why do you need a lawyer at all?
And aren’t you putting the cart before the horse? You’re listing birth certificate requirements – how about we start with a state’s requirements to issue an acceptable Voter ID? In which state can you expend the thousands of dollars, specifically?
I walked in to my poll in Los Angeles County and found out that another person signed in under my name. Although I could prove who I was, the pollworker didn’t care and just gave me a provisional ballot that may or may not have counted.
No, it is not fraud. It is not the government’s fault that people cannot get ID that makes them a functional member of 2015 society and in some cases, the standard for ID is minimal. Utility bills or even a notarized statement from a couple of friends that you are who you say you are is sometimes all that is needed. The issue is not voting and I was one of the first (if not the first) on this board that advocated if there are people who honestly through lack of resources cannot get basic ID to get a job, cash a check, etc. then governments should be providing services to get them that ID. A couple of Pubs have agreed but AFAIK no Dems on this board support that. Instead they talk about the millions of disenfranchised (of course ignoring the known cases of voter fraud as de minimis). If there is such a lack of ID with Democrats, then why aren’t THEY going out and helping people get ID’s?
I am reading slash2k’s post and if that is the problem with voter ID then the problem doesn’t exist because you are in effect disenfranchising someone who:
Never had a birth certificate registered with a county
Never had a certified baptism or birth written in the family Bible
Never had a driver’s license
Never had a job
Never had a social security card
Do such people exist? Maybe but they would measure in the dozens not in the millions.
So, you’re recommending that we get people ID without tying ID to one’s ability to vote? We can do that since the issue is not voting. I’m in favor of that.
What I’m not in favor of is tying one’s ability to vote to availability of ID, BEFORE implementing this “get everyone an ID” concept.
I have been recommending that since the thread on Penn’s Voter ID law. For me the voting is really a non-issue because if the (county) governments made sure people had the identification needed to fully participate in today’s society then how can there be any objection to Voter ID?
There are two answers to that. The first answer is how in the world do we know? The anti-ID crowd now finally admits that preventable fraud does occur but minimizes it. I’ve seen the argument of risk/reward but that fails for two reasons:
The risk/reward argument also means no one (or extremely few) people break the speed limit while driving.
The chances of getting caught are almost nil. In fact, without Voter ID it would have to be a very unusual case where an individual can get caught committing fraud addressed by this measure. At best one could figure out that it did occur (like in my case) but have no clue who committed the crime.
I looked at some data from the last national election and using duplicate votes as the known “Voter Fraud” figure and extrapolating out for cases where the legal voter did not vote (hence no duplicate) I came up with a few thousand votes as an extreme back-of-the-envelope rough baseline.
The second answer is the one NO ONE is discussing. Voter ID laws are the last step in ensuring citizens vote. The problem is upstream. If I were an illegal or registered alien (i.e. non-citizen) I could register to vote by claiming I am a citizen, no proof required. If I am in a state that gives ID to illegal immigrants or if I am in the country lawfully I would actually have my ID to vote. My personal feeling is there is a ton more of THIS fraud occurring and most would not be stopped by voter ID. I could cast stones at the Dems claiming they wish to keep the status quo since most non-citizens vote Democrat but I’d have to cast them to the Pubs too since we want to stop voter fraud but we’re going about it ass-backwards.
In order to register to vote in my state, the very first step, you need to show proof of citizenship. Here’s a list of the acceptable documents in Kansas. This is very similar to the list of documents acceptable to obtain a Kansas driver’s license or non-driver’s identification, the most common of the documents acceptable as photo ID.
For most people, the birth certificate is the most useful and most needed document. Sure, you can use a passport, but you can’t get a passport without a birth certificate. If you were born in the U.S., you’re not going to have a Consular Report of Birth Abroad or a Certificate of Naturalization; relatively few of us qualify for Bureau of Indian Affairs documents. A concealed-carry permit is acceptable photo ID, but you are required to have a driver’s license or non-driver ID to obtain the concealed-carry permit (excepting only certain active-duty military and dependents), and you need a birth certificate, passport, or naturalization document to get the DL/ID.
Every state has their own procedure for obtaining a delayed certificate of birth, and their own rules about what evidence is needed. That process is frequently a lengthy administrative and/or judicial process. Virginia’s procedure is fairly typical: you may submit your evidence to the State Registrar, who judges its adequacy. If deemed inadequate, your next step is to file a petition in the circuit court. I assume you will agree that most people appearing in circuit court are better served by having an attorney.
The different states, as mentioned, have different standards. Texas, e.g., is rather notorious for demanding most cases go through court (see the article I linked above about Alecia Pennington, whose parents don’t believe in government documents), whereas the Kansas vital statistics office has a reputation for being more reasonable. In many states, such as California, the law demands affidavits from your parents or other persons who were present at the time of the birth; if you don’t have these, you are required to go through Superior Court to get your birth certificate. (And as I noted previously, if you are seventy-something, the odds that your parents or the midwife or others present at your birth are still around to give affidavits are not good.)
In other words, depending on your personal situation, the states in which you may be required to expend thousands of dollars to obtain a birth certificate necessary to obtain adequate ID to register and vote in your state of residence would be Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware … Washington, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Wyoming and all the ones in the middle I omitted because I’m too lazy to type the whole list of 50 plus the District.
I think people acknowledge that there are Americans that would have a near impossible time proving citizenship. However your examples are those that CANNOT get ID. I wonder how many of the millions being discussed could get ID but simply don’t have it or need some resources like a notary or internet access to get their IDs.
I knew a guy in Illinois who couldn’t get a driver’s license without a birth certificate. He went down to the courthouse, but they wouldn’t give him his birth certificate without an ID. This went back and forth for awhile until somebody suggested getting a doctor’s note. So he went to the doctor, paid for an office visit, and the doctor confirmed he was himself.
Took weeks, lots of travel to various offices, and at the very least the cost of a doctor visit which is probably a few hundred dollars. Not to mention lost time, gas, and wear and tear on his vehicle. And luckily he had access to the internet to research this and a social network to facilitate it or he might have never gotten an ID.
This is a very common case. You’re telling me that’s not a hardship for the poor and disabled? They don’t even get to have a second job because the one they have demands 100% availability. So for many people on minimum wage, they would have to quit their job just to get an ID because their boss won’t give them the flexibility to deal with something like this. “Kafkaesque” isn’t something our bureaucracy should strive for.
The problem with ID is two-fold. A complete lack of effort from politicians (both Dem and Pub) to ensure people have access to ID. A person who has verifiably no resources should be able to go to the county office complex (yes you need to be able to get there) and have access to forms, internet, a notary, etc. to get their ID. Hell, I even think the county could pay the small fee that the originating county charges if the person truly is in poverty/has fixed income.
But isn’t this 2015? Why do we still use a system from back in the 1920s where whoever holds a piece of paper is legally me? Are you telling me that a birth registration system cannot be created where given information like my name, birthday, birthplace, parents name, SSN, DNA marker 17, etc. my county couldn’t search Los Angeles County records and at least verify that I exist and OMG that I’m a NB citizen? And if the system allowed a small DL or passport style photo to be updated …
Sure, we could do it. There’s no political will to do so. The Kansas government has no incentive to allow the Californians into our records, and vice versa, while any federal mandate would be seen as overreaching and an attempt to impose a de facto national ID, which at least one party views as deeply suspicious.
I know two guy’s in Illinois who were told that they had already voted that day. No ID is required, so anyone can say they were ME, or my BROTHER, and vote in our place.