For the eighth straight year, the Republican-controlled
House of Representatives on Feb. 14 approved legislation that seeks to require
Missourians to show government-issued photo identification at their polling
place in order to vote. Such a requirement could potentially disenfranchise
many of the estimated 250,000 Missourians -- mostly elderly, poor, disabled and
minority voters -- who don’t posses a driver’s license or other government ID
and can’t easily obtain one. The House action, which Democrats opposed, came on
a pair of companion measures, which now move to the Senate.
HJR 5, a proposed constitutional amendment that would appear
on the November 2014 statewide ballot for voter ratification, passed 107-46. It
would grant the General Assembly the power to impose a photo voter ID
requirement in an attempt to overrule a 2006 Missouri Supreme Court decision
that said lawmakers lack such authority under the state constitution. HB 48,
which passed 105-48, would implement the ID requirement, contingent upon voter
approval of HJR 5.
In addition to the 2006 photo voter
ID law the Supreme Court invalidated, Republican lawmakers also passed a
proposed photo voter ID constitutional amendment, along with implementing
legislation, in 2011. Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, vetoed the implementing bill,
and the proposed amendment didn’t go on the November 2012 ballot as scheduled
after a judge ruled Republican lawmakers had crafted “insufficient and unfair”
ballot language for it that was designed to deceive voters.
As the Supreme Court noted in its
2006 decision, the only type of fraud that a photo voter ID requirement could
prevent is voter impersonation at the polls. There has never been a reported
case of voter impersonation in Missouri.
Pat Conway, look at it this way.
ReplyDeleteA photo ID with a mag-strip with individuals details could be handed to the poll judge; the judge could verify the card belongs to the face presenting it; the election judge could then swipe the card into a scanner to verify validity and approve the voter to vote; the voter could then swipe the card into the electronic voting machine and all of the candidates and issues specific to that voter could appear on a touch screen; and, after voting and touching the 'finished' icon the electronic records would not allow another vote using that card until the next election.
Issuing the card could be as easy as getting a drivers license.
Thank of the long-term savings in the election process and voter fraud would then be easily identified if a poll judge allowed the wrong person to cast a ballot. Punish this by some time in the slammer and the voting process is safe and sound and this bull shit stops.
Excellent idea. Conway, a former County Clerk, should understand this, but he was basically a go-along-to-get-along office holder.
ReplyDeleteIf Missouri would pass a law allowing this type of process, the vendors would develop a system and compete for each county voter system when the system became outdated and needed to be replaced.
Grow into this system, and yes, make the voting card multipurpose with a photo.