[EL] fantasy policy alternative to voter ID laws

[Doug Hess]

How's this policy suggestion to satisfy the voter fraud hysteria:

If you don't have whatever (minimal) identification is needed to
register on the spot and/or to vote, the following happens:
1) A poll worker takes a Polaroid photograph of you (i.e., instant
print and no digital or negative copy) and staples it to a statement
which you complete affirming that you are who you say you are and you
live at such and such place, etc., including all the info needed to
register you.
2) You then vote.
3) If you were not already registered, this statement would also
register you, or update your registration.
4) A few days or couple of weeks after the election, if there is no
contest to the election or no valid question regarding the person's
qualifications to vote, etc., the photo could be destroyed (or
whatever eases any fears of being photographed).

Presumably the only way around this is the way around other photo ID
security measures: a person willing to risk letting multiple photos be
taken of them as they commit a crime.  (Perhaps O'Keefe will done
false beards or rubber noses to pose as new fake voters, which
demonstrates how silly this all is.)

It is almost like providing people with photo IDs on the spot, except
it serves the security concerns of the voter ID proponents without
requiring people to do anything special or have anything special on
hand other than create a little bit more of a record. I guess it does
single them out, but that would be better than not being able to vote,
or having to run in circles, etc. Plus, the requirement is not exactly
a scarlet letter.

Of course, I have no faith it will be picked up AND I do not believe
such measures are needed, but just thought I would toss it out there
as an alternative that might not be too hard to implement. I'm sure
this will seem an intrusion to some, and, again, I don't think any
such policy is needed, but depending on the details of implementation
and the fact that voting already creates a public record, perhaps it
would fly just enough to point out how silly this all is.

Thoughts?

Some other reactions to the long long long email thread O'Keefe
started (I wonder if he really gets off on making us talk so much
about him):

1. Regarding arguments about the difficulting in doing this that or
the other thing:  If there is not a term already, I think there should
be a pyschological term for the perceptual bias or heuristic that
makes a past barrier, burden, cost, etc. that was paid/overcome now
appear smaller for others. This is similar to, but maybe more
insidious, than the inability to see some hurdles as greater for some
people than others. This bias seems to plague judges who pronounce
what's easy (or not hard) without any reference to for whom some act
is easy. Is there such a bias? If not, can I name it? I'm thinking I
will either name it after myself, or perhaps I will call it "Boppism."

2. Were the NH O'Keefers caught in the act? The most improtant part of
the TPM article is this: "Someone did, in fact, catch on to the scheme
when a man dressed in a suit and tie tried to vote as a dead man known
to the poll watcher. The man left before police arrived and said the
poll watcher would “soon find out” why he tried to vote under a fake
name, the Boston Herald reported Tuesday night.
Henry Brady of the University of California told TPM that O’Keefe’s
video showed that what his team did was “possible” but said that was
never really a question. He also said that other techniques short of
voter ID — like asking voters to sign a roll when they receive their
ballot — would stop the type of fraud O’Keefe’s allies were
attempting. “Yes, this shows it’s possible to do what they did but you
have to ask yourself… how many illegal immigrants would risk a jail
term to vote illegally?” Brady said. “What they didn’t tell us, were
they ever stopped and asked what’s going on here.”  "

Is there more on this side of the story? If the ballots were cast,
would they have been caught? What was the guy "dressed in a suit and
tie [who] tried to vote" doing? Or should the article not say "tried
to vote"?

(I included the Brady quote because he points out succintly that the
gimmic proves nothing.)


3. Re: the observation that nuns do not marry: Nuns do not sign up for
the military draft either.

4. Re: Lori Minnite's comments on ad hominem, she's absolutely
correct. See the third and second to last paragraphs of section six
for this entry on informal logic in the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-informal/#One
Of course, Lori was Project Vote's Research Director when I was a
consultant for PV, so perhaps the ad hominem is that I'm just
buttering her up for a good recommendation letter. :-)

Doug