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

[Robbin Stewart]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Robbin Stewart <gtbear at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 1:27 PM
Subject: Re: [EL] re “Kansas’ state voter ID law tested in August primary”
To: JBoppjr at aol.com


Sure. So anybody who is interested and has the resources can go check out
those 405 ballots, and publicize their findings and call for prosecution of
any fraudsters they find. The same thing could be done in Indiana, where
there have been about 2000 uncounted ID-related provisional ballots since
2008. Sounds like a worthwhile project.


On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 8:42 AM, <JBoppjr at aol.com> wrote:

> **
> 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
> 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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