[EL] More on the Voter Impersonation Fraud Case in Fort Worth

[Jim Gardner]

The ready support sometimes expressed on this list for national ID as a 
voting-security measure has for a while struck me as strangely detached from 
other, long-standing debates about civil liberties.  For decades, groups at 
all points on the political spectrum have opposed a national identification 
card -- especially a biometric one -- on the ground that it would represent 
a dangerous enhancement in the government's ability to monitor the movements 
and activities of citizens.  Here, for example, is a 2004 statement opposing 
national ID co-signed by, among others, the ACLU and the Eagle Forum (!):

http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/coalition-letter-senate-urging-senators-reject-any-proposal-would-lead-creati

Maybe these concerns are simply obsolete in view of the tracking 
capabilities of the internet, or maybe the fear of government monitoring 
seems quaint in light of the ability of private companies to do so, or in 
light of the apparently unlimited willingness of modern Americans to subject 
themselves to surveillance to get, say, a coupon or an update on the present 
location of their friends.  Either way, though, it does not follow 
inevitably from the fact that national ID could quell fears of voter fraud 
that such a measure ought to be adopted; electoral accuracy is not the only 
value implicated.

That said, one of the abundant grounds for skepticism about the need for a 
good, reliable system of national voter identification is that such claims 
sometimes are made from the same quarters in which national ID has long been 
passionately opposed on the ground that it is the first step in a federal 
conspiracy to confiscate guns household by household.

Jim

________________________________
James A. Gardner
Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and
Joseph W. Belluck and Laura L. Aswad
SUNY Distinguished Professor of Civil Justice
SUNY Buffalo Law School
The State University of New York
Room 316, O'Brian Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260-1100
voice: 716-645-2052
fax: 716-645-5968
e-mail: jgard at buffalo.edu
www.law.buffalo.edu
Papers at http://ssrn.com/author=40126


On 5/3/2012 2:20 PM, kfeng at commoncause.org wrote:
> I am interested in the reasons why a thumbprint or other biometric would 
> be good/bad for policy reasons as an identifier or deterrent to the rare 
> case of impersonation.  Lori?
> Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
>