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| The first sections of the current North Carolina voter registration application for residents. |
Staff Writer Opinion Piece
You’ve never left the country so you don’t own a passport. You can’t afford a car so you don’t have a driver’s license. In the state of North Carolina about 500,000 registered voters have no current photo-ID. This chunk of voters consists disproportionately of the elderly, poor and minorities. According to the Charlotte Observer, African-Americans are 22 percent of all North Carolina voters, but they are 32 percent of voters without a photo-ID.
A new bill going through the North Carolina General Assembly would
require a state issued photo-ID to vote. The bill is an attempt to squash voter
fraud. South Carolina and six other states have installed laws requiring state
issued photo-ID at the polls. These laws are much stricter than voter-ID laws
in most other states, most of which simply require any type of identification
to vote.
In South Carolina, it is supposed to be easy to get a free ID, but that
is not always the case. One exception is Larrie Butler. Butler, an
African-American, was born in his home in 1926 in South Carolina when harsh
segregation prevented many blacks from access to hospitals. As a result, he has
no birth certificate. He was told it would cost him over $100 to get the
necessary documents to attain the “free” ID. This is essentially a poll tax;
reminiscent of the post-Civil War South when poll taxes were used to prevent
blacks from voting. Now, the 24th Amendment prohibits states from
inhibiting the right to vote by enacting a poll tax.
I am not suggesting that there is any kind of conspiracy to
disenfranchise voters of a certain background. I am aware of the positive
effects of voter identification laws and I agree with their intended goal: to
eliminate voter fraud and better our democracy. The laws have been popular in
most states that they have been introduced in. According to a Rasmussen poll,
69% of voters believe that a photo-ID should be required to vote. The law
sounds great at first glance; however, I can’t help but wonder if the results
of that Rasmussen poll would have been different if the respondents knew that
the law could violate some voters’ rights.
In addition, there is not much evidence that voter fraud is as
widespread a problem as supporters of the bill are implying. In Ohio in 2002
and 2004, four of the 9,078,728 votes cast, or 0.00004 percent, were proven fraudulent.
In Washington, there was one fraudulent ballot per 100,000 votes, or 0.001
percent. There is no proof that there is or has ever been an organized effort
to tilt an election. Most of the talk about widespread voter fraud is fear
mongering and while I do not disagree that voter fraud is a problem, I’m not
sure it’s a big enough problem to merit these strict voting laws.
The people pushing for these
laws need to realize that they are indirectly violating the constitutional
rights of some Americans. You should not have to pay anything to exercise any
of your constitutional rights; voting is a fundamental right and should not
require special “credentials.” Supporters of the bill need to ask themselves if
completely eliminating voter fraud is worth completely eliminating the right to
vote for some Americans.
