Carter-Baker on Carter-Baker

Jimmy Carter and James Baker respond to critics of their report in this NY Times oped. Most significant I believe is the fact that James Baker signed on to this statement about Georgia's i.d. law: " We consider Georgia's law discriminatory." Carter and Baker also take an important step here that was not emphasized in the report: voter i.d. rules should only be implemented with the government proactively registering voters.

Yes, we are concerned about the approximately 12 percent of citizens who lack a driver's license. So we proposed that states finally assume the responsibility to seek out citizens to both register voters and provide them with free ID's that meet federal standards. States should open new offices, use social service agencies and deploy mobile offices to register voters. By connecting ID's to registration, voting participation will be expanded.

But the other serious problem with Carter-Baker remains: people who don't have or who have lost ids get disenfranchised. As the oped makes clear, by 2010, anyone who could not produce the physical id within 48 hours of voting would be disenfranchised. Far better, as I've argued, to give the alternative of using biometric information like a fingerprint.

See also this Mobile Register editorial and Doug Chapin's director's report from Electionline, which should be available later today at this link.

"Libertarians sue over ballot access laws"

A.P. offers this report from North Carolina.

Holding New Orleans Elections in Baton Rouge?

See here. Would the Justice Department preclear? How will the votes of displaced people be ensured?

Clarification on McCain Internet Comment

Here. Bob Bauer reacts to the original comment

"Campaign Reform Edges Ahead; Details Unresolved"

See this report in the Hartford Courant. See this related oped by Joan Claybrook and Chellie Pingree. Thanks to Dewey Dow for the links.

Brennan Center Responds to Gronke

One of Paul Gronke's Carter-Baker related posts questioned the Brennan Center's arguments on absentee ballots. Justin Levitt of the Brennan Center has written a response, and you can find both the original post and the response here. It is the second comment, not the first (which is spam: I note that Paul has the same problem with comments that I did and that recently plagued Scotusblog: spam being placed into comments and trackbacks. I hope to upgrade my blogging software soon in order to solve this problem.)

Leonard on Carter-Baker

Lloyd Leonard of the League of Women Voters writes:

I enjoyed reading your Christian Science Monitor piece.

Representing an organization that opposes an ID requirement for voting, as advocated by the Carter – Baker commission, I feel the need to point out that the commission did not cost out its companion proposal for a requirement that states take proactive responsibility to register voters. You rightly point out that any serious ID proposal would need to include such a requirement.

The Carter – Baker commission did give cost estimates for making state voter databases interoperable and upgrading voting machines. The commission represented this total cost as the “Estimated Costs of Recommended Improvements.” Evidently the commission was serious about interoperability and machine upgrades. If they were serious about proactive government voter registration, one would have expected that they would propose the means for achieving it. The REAL ID Act, of course, provides the means for achieving the Carter-Baker proposal to require ID before eligible citizens are allowed to vote.

Proactive government voter registration may well be a good thing. Achieving it, however, will be costly and will require a much stronger federal presence in elections.

Thanks for writing!

More Wang on Carter-Baker

See this opinion piece.

-- 
Rick Hasen
William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law
Loyola Law School
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