[EL] re “Kansas’ state voter ID law tested in August primary”

[JBoppjr at aol.com]

Isn't there a third possibility, that the people who attempted to vote were 
 not entitled to vote so the voter ID law prevented voter fraud?  Jim  Bopp
 
 
In a message dated 9/25/2012 12:22:55 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
gtbear at gmail.com writes:

_http://electionlawblog.org/?p=40653_ (http://electionlawblog.org/?p=40653) 
The  2012 Kansas primary gives us some new data on the effects of voter ID. 
We  learn that of 405 provisional ballots for not having ID, 251 did not 
return  with more ID and did not have their ballots counted. So, in the 
population of  people casting provisional ballots, voter ID requirements deterred 
60% of  these people from finalizing their votes.

This is voter  disenfranchisement in a weak sense; they tried to vote but 
their votes were  not counted. In most cases probably, it is not voter 
disenfranchisement in the  stronger sense of, most of these people could have 
voted if they put more time  effort and money into it, but they didn't bother. 
It is not entirely  reasonable to extrapolate this more generally and say 
that voter ID keeps 60%  of voters away from the primary; the populations are 
not exactly comparable.  However, now we have some numbers where before we 
had guesses.
If our  concern is with the integrity of the elections, it should matter 
that voter ID  requirements deter 60%, at least of this small sample. Primary 
turnout is  already low enough that some people think the result promote 
extremists (like  Kobach), and that the focus for election integrity should be 
on getting more  voters, by reducing the costs of voting.
As far as I know, none of the  litigation so far has really focused on this 
point, deterrence rather than  disenfranchisement in the strong sense. The 
state interest typically cited by  states is election integrity. Instead of 
focusing  argument on how  individual voting rights outweigh the state 
interest, one could argue that the  means are a poor fit, and do not actually 
promote election integrity after  all, so if one is doing an Anderson balancing 
test, there's nothing on that  side of the balance. 251 votes out of 1/3 of 
a million is not a lot, so in one  sense the program is a "success" in that 
it does less measurable harm than  some predicted. My sense is that voting 
is like an iceberg, 9/10th invisible.  If there were 405 provisional 
ID-related ballots, there were probably 4050  people deterred from voting (and 4 or 
5 actually fraudulent votes deterred.)  But I have no way to prove or 
measure this. In my neighborhood we often have  elections decided by a handful of 
votes. I did not get around to attending the  Libertarian convention this 
year in Las Vegas as a delegate, as I have  sometimes done before, and a guy 
know pretty well lost the party chairmanship  election by one vote on the 
5th ballot. In the Indiana primary this year, I  was turned away from the 
polling place because I'm not willing to show a voter  ID. This time, I didn't 
bother to cast a provisional ballot. They don't, in  Indiana, keep any 
records of how many people show up, want to vote, but are  sent away for no ID. 
Having such records might be useful. Eventually Indiana's  voter ID will be 
back in court on an as-applied, data-based challenge,and the  more data there 
is the more the court can fairly engage in balancing competing  interests.

I just wanted to point out that the kansas numbers can be  read one way, as 
a great success for voter ID, but looked at another way, show  a great  
failure.


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