The article cropped up in my stream today, which reminded me of a conversation I had last weekend with my mom, which led me to go casting about for a lot of info I've run across over the past months on the article's basic premise, which is, Voter ID laws don't discriminate because almost everyone can get a free state ID if they'd just get up off their butts and get one.
The article also suggests that Voter ID laws impact very few people because very few provisional ballots are cast.
The article is wrong, on both parts.
First off, lack of approved government photo ID (the definition of which varies from state to state, but to generalize) is remarkably widespread. http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/download_file_39242.pdf carries a lot of the statistics that are accepted here (the info was gathered in 2006). As many as 11% of the US voting-age citizenry doesn't have approved government photo IDs. Those numbers go up dramatically as you look at the elderly (18%), minorities (25% of blacks), and lower income brackets (15% with incomes below $35K).
Some folk find this remarkable. "How do you live in society without a photo ID?" Those questions are most often asked by people outside of such communities. Folk get by through dealing with businesses that don't require them. The most common ID, for example, is the Drivers License. But if you don't own a car or don't drive, you likely don't have one. And you probably don't have a credit card, so you deal in a cash society that doesn't rely on photo IDs to verify credit cards. You cash your paycheck at a payday cash checking shop (which takes a nice slice off the top to account for their increase chance of fraud). You frequent the local liquor store where they know you and don't need to card you (or you have a friend who does have ID go and pick up something for you).
These are real things, and real people. It's quite possible to live without IDs, even in today's society.
So, why not then get a "free" ID from the state? Because they aren't really free, except for your actual transaction at the window. http://www.charleshamiltonhouston.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/FullReportVoterIDJune2014.pdf looks at that in more detail, but there are a number of areas where cost come in.
First off, you need to validate your identity to get such an ID. That usually means a birth cert. But as the Brennan Center report notes, 7% of Americans don't have ready access to citizenship papers (birth certificates, passports, etc.). That climbs as income level drops — 12% of voting age citizens with incomes under $25K don't have such documentation. For women, 52% don't have a birth certificate with their current legal name; 34% don't have access to any proof of citizenship with their current legal name.
Getting that documentation isn't necessarily easy, either. Getting an official birth certificates usually costs money — not an exorbitant amount for most, but for a lot of folks paying $10-20 or more is non-trivial. The numbers can go up significantly if they were born out of state. There can also be costs to obtain copies of marriage licenses for women (generally) to prove that their name has been changed if they did so. There can be further costs if legal intervention is required (e.g., someone who was adopted, someone who didn't have a birth certificate because they had been delivered by a midwife).
Costs for getting birth certificates and the like are often higher for folks no longer in a state. And some states (North and South Carolina, for example), require you to show a photo ID to prove you're entitled to get a birth certificate (a nice Catch-22 there).
IDs are issued by government offices. For example, Wisconsin issued such "free" IDs at their DMV offices. There are costs associated, though, with going to one of the 92 DMVs — bus fare, for example, if you can't bum a ride from a friend (remember, no Drivers Licenses here). Those can add up for each trip taken (if the lines were too long, or it turns out you didn't bring what was needed). Further such locations aren't open 24×7; again, in Wisconsin's case, all but 2 DMVs closed by 5pm; only 1 DMV was open on a weekend day. All of those venues, being outside normal working hours, were crowded, and could require additional trips. The alternative for many would be to take time off of work (thus losing wages) to go there during "normal working hours."
The judgment striking down Wisconsin's Voter ID law (http://goo.gl/KHoUYu) goes through a number of these factors. The Charles Hamilton Houston report linked to estimates that all of these factors combined to cost people seeking "free" IDs $75-150, and those cases where legal intervention is necessary can cost much more.
Free IDs aren't.
The Politico article suggests that this isn't any problem because people who don't have the right ID can cast a "provisional" ballot and then later come back with appropriate identification — and the statistics reported indicates that few such cases exist.
One could counter that all the studies of voter identification fraud are even more passingly rare — so rare, in fact, that it has to call into question why there is such a loud call for laws to prevent such fraud, particularly from the GOP.
But all that aside, the number provided is meaningless. If you're told (or even warned by signs plastered around your neighborhood by "helpful" anti-voting-fraud groups) that you can't register or vote without government photo ID (and, by those warning signs, that it's a crime to do so, subject to all sorts of penalties), you're not likely to go and cast a provisional ballot, esp. if it's not likely your ID-less circumstance is going to change in the next 30 days. The provisional ballot thing is great for folks who leave their ID at home, not so much for folk who don't have ID in the first place, and can't afford to get it (or for whom the cost of getting it is non-trivial compared to others).
One can argue that if someone is truly motivated to vote, they will go through that level of inconvenience or cost. I would suggest that a lot of the folk making that argument either find that cost inconsequential or else don't have to worry about it because they already have the photo IDs and copies of their birth certificates they need. It's easy to trivialize a burden when it isn't your own.
(I also recommend http://goo.gl/4NQKoW is a more recent article, summarizing many of the same themes.)
If we consider this to be a burning issue of our times — if we really do want positive ID for voting, then the answer would seem to be a common national ID card that we would both require and ensure provisioning to every citizen, at government expense. Further, it would eliminate the variations in what IDs are acceptable between states, reducing confusion and questions of fairness (or loopholes). There are some significant downsides to such a program (cost, counterfeiting, database management, not to mention concerns about the Number of the Beast and similar zaniness), but those same problems occur with current state-based ID schemes, only more diffusely and thus hidden from view.
The fact is, we already have a de facto (and shoddily assembled) national ID program by state proxy (with adjuncts like Social Security cards further muddying matters). While people can live without such an ID now, they do face barriers and problems without one, as in the case in point. Maybe we'd just be better off biting the bullet and making what we've already cobbled together something more straightforward.
Going back to the article — are Voter ID laws a poll tax? A poll tax (in this context) is a fee in order to vote. For Voter ID, that fee may be one-time (to get a legit state ID, though parts of it may be repeated because of name changes, residency changes, etc.), but it remains something that people have to pay in order to exercise their constitutional right to the suffrage. It's hard not to argue that the term applies.
The Poll Tax That Wasn’t
When the Supreme Court over the weekend rejected a petition to stop a Texas voter ID law from going into effect for the midterms, the left commenced its wailing and gnashing of teeth. In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the law “purposely discriminatory,” and everyone piled in behind her with denunciations of the Lone Star…
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