[EL] Up to 1 Million Voters Face Disenfranchisement

Sat Sep 15 20:33:31 PDT 2012

By this logic, literacy tests didn't disenfranchise anyone, only those who
were unduly burdened because they didn't learn how to read. Nor did poll
taxes, since a poor person who wanted to vote could just skip a few meals.
And if you want to flip it around for contemporary Republican
constituencies, keeping in mind that literacy tests and poll taxes were
originally aimed at Southern African-American Republicans, our military
personnel in war zones were not unduly burdened by registration laws that
required applications to be notarized since they could take extraordinary
measures to get the notary.

But, perhaps you have another word for "disenfranchised" that describes
people in these situations?

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor
George Mason University
4400 University Drive - 3F4
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444

703-993-4191 (office)
e-mail:  mmcdon at gmu.edu               
web:     http://elections.gmu.edu
twitter: @ElectProject     

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Hasen [mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu] 
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 11:12 PM
To: mmcdon at gmu.edu
Cc: law-election at UCI.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Up to 1 Million Voters Face Disenfranchisement

Based on a conversation with a voting rights activist last week, I think 
part of the issue here is definitional.  I define a person as 
"disenfranchised" by a voter id law if that person literally cannot vote 
because of the law but who wishes to cast a valid vote.  The most 
important cases would be: (1) a person who cannot get the underlying 
documentation needed to get a state issued i.d. (such as there are no 
birth records); (2) a person who cannot afford to get the underlying 
documentation or get to the location to get the i.d.; and (3) a person 
who has a physical impairment or religious objection which prevents 
getting the i.d.
I would not include within this definition people (many, many people in 
Pa., apparently), for whom getting the i.d. would be a big hassle, and 
who may be deterred by this hassle.

While the numbers show that there are many people who currently lack the 
i.d., it is actually very hard to find many actual people who (1) lack 
the i.d., (2) cannot get the i.d. because of the reasons listed above; 
(3) cannot vote some other way without i.d. (such as an absentee ballot 
for need in PA); but (4) want to vote in the election.  If this is our 
universe of "disenfranchised" voters, it is clearly much smaller than 1 
million voters in PA.

If you count as disenfranchised those other voters for whom getting the 
i.d. would be a big hassle, and who may deterred from voting by this 
hassle, then the numbers are undoubtedly higher (and my sense is that 
Democrats are much more concerned about this group than the much smaller 
group of the people i would consider disenfranchised by a voter id 
law).  But I don't count these voters are actually disenfranchised.

To be clear, I don't support the idea of putting voters through this 
hassle on the state level given the paltry evidence of the law's 
supposed anti-fraud benefits.  But that's a different question from the 
number of "disenfranchised" voters.

On 9/15/12 7:35 PM, Michael McDonald wrote:
> Not sure who the "we" is. The 1 million number is consistent with what was
> presented by plaintiff's expert witness, Matt Barreto. With approximately
> 9.5 million eligible voters in Pennsylvania, and if the survey evidence is
> correct that 10% do not have the forms of id required by the state, you
get
> a number of up to 1 million disenfranchised.
>
> Perhaps what Rick means is that, well, the turnout rate among those
> individuals is exceedingly low, so they have already disenfranchised
> themselves by not registering and voting. This is what I find to be most
> pernicious about the district court's logic and weighing of the evidence,
> that it is acceptable to erect high barriers to voting among those with
low
> turnout rates because they already do not vote. The judge, for example,
> dismissed Barreto's survey because the sample frame was of eligible
voters,
> not registered voters.
>
> ============
> Dr. Michael P. McDonald
> Associate Professor
> George Mason University
> 4400 University Drive - 3F4
> Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
>
> 703-993-4191 (office)
> e-mail:  mmcdon at gmu.edu
> web:     http://elections.gmu.edu
> twitter: @ElectProject
> "Could Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Help Romney Win Race? Up to 1 Million
> Voters Face Disenfranchisement"
> Posted on September 15, 2012 5:37 pm by Rick Hasen
> Here is a link to a Democracy Now! program.  I haven't had a chance to
> listen to the program but the 1 million disenfranchised voters seems quite
> high and not supported at all by what we know.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

-- 
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
949.824.0495 - fax
rhasen at law.uci.edu
http://law.uci.edu/faculty/page1_r_hasen.html
http://electionlawblog.org
Now available: The Voting Wars: http://amzn.to/y22ZTv