[EL] different ID rules (and other rules) by age?

[Doug Hess]

Do many state photo ID laws have rules that differ based on age?

I'm just thinking through the basic fairness problem this sets up: if
you're 64 you could have a harder time voting than your 66-year old spouse,
assuming you both have and lack the same kinds of ID. Does age determine
policy in other areas of election administration? I.e., if you are over a
certain age you have an easier time requesting an absentee ballot, etc.? If
so, why? Is it that age is being used as a proxy for disability or
transportation limitations?

I guess it gets to the heart of the issue: different citizens in the same
state have unequal probabilities of facing a barrier. Perhaps cataloging
those potential differences and thinking of them as probabilities, tallies
of paths to the ballot, or as total costs will make estimating and
explaining who is harmed more apparent than just estimated total numbers or
percents of the population.

For instance, one group is "people over age X" who are are allowed to have
recourse to Y procedure and can use some list of IDs, compared to "people
who rent with utilities included" who will have fewer forms of ID and don't
get recourse to Y procedure, compared to those in the uniformed services
who may be required by the service to have a certain ID that counts for
voting that nobody else could use and also don't have recourse to Y
procedure but are the only ones that have recourse to Z procedure if they
are overseas, etc.. I'm just making these scenarios up, but seems to me
such a chart would help highlight how the number of "hurdles to the ballot
box" differ for various groups (of course, many people may be in more than
one group, but still ... ).  I guess this could also be done as a decision
tree chart or a creative designer could impact this information like a
"Candy Cane" game board, if you are this kind of person you get to jump
ahead, but if you are another kind of person, you get detoured onto a
longer route.

BTW, that the judget in PA seems to think that 1% is ok because it's less
than the percentage some expert gave goes to show that comparisons of
numbers play odd tricks on people. Did he say why 1%, or was it "more than
1% but less than whatever," was acceptable? One percent of the adult
citizen population in PA is a large number of people. (Or did the news
reports not portary this correctly? Was this debate not important to the
judge's conclusions? I confess I didn't read the decision.)

Douglas R. Hess, PhD
Washington, DC
202-955-5869
douglasrhess at gmail.com

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