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Saturday, January 02, 2010

Ind. Law - Indiana's voter ID law: more restrictive than that of other countries?

The Jan. 4, 2010 issue of the subscription-only newsletter, Indiana Legislative Insight, includes this item, reprinted here with permission:

Electoral reform attorney Tova Wang, a democracy fellow at The Century Foundation and vice president for research at Common Cause, co-authors an article in the Harvard Law and Policy Review with Dr. Frederic C. Schaffer, a Harvard, MIT, and University of Massachusetts political scientist who researches global election fraud. "Is Everyone Else Doing It? Indiana's Voter Identification Law in International Perspective" seeks to debunk the argument proffered by supporters of Indiana-like Voter ID requirements that a number of other nations mandate impose polling place IDs.

The authors argue that Indiana's law is considerably more restrictive than those imposed by most other countries, and that many other nations make it easier to obtain the necessary identification than Indiana does.

The article also raises a point we hadn't heard commented upon in the Indiana context: "ID-renting."

The authors explain what this is while contending that our law actually may lead to encouraging the practice:

Paradoxically, the new Indiana law actually increases opportunities for election cheating – in the form of abstention buying, which, like absentee ballot fraud, is relatively low risk for the perpetrator, since nothing detectably illegal need go on at the polling place. We know that political operatives around the world have used voter identification requirements to suppress the vote of opposition supporters by "renting" from individuals their identification documents, making these individuals unable to vote.
The authors explain that:
ID-renting works best where only one form of identification is allowed, or where voters are likely to possess only one of the allowable forms of identification. That roughly half of Indiana registered voters possess only one form of allowable identification (a driver's license) certainly makes ID-renting a feasible strategy in that state.[54] A skeptic might counter that Indiana is not in Africa or Latin America, and that ID-renting could not become a serious problem in the Hoosier state. In this context, it is troubling to note that Indiana politicians in places as diverse as the city of East Chicago and rural Crawford County have already demonstrated a willingness to buy votes under the guise of tree-trimming and sidewalk improvement schemes as well as with cash and, as one legend has it, whiskey. Indiana thus may be more vulnerable to identification renting than most are aware.

Whatever the future of abstention buying in Indiana, the threat of in-person voter impersonation has been low. It has been far more real in at least two places abroad that have recently adopted voter identification requirements. _

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[54] Note too that a crafty voter might try to outwit an abstention buyer by "renting out" her driver's license and then voting absentee, which does not require identification. But as long as the buyer defers payment, he can determine, from lists prepared by election officials, which individuals requested and used absentee ballots, and thus which individuals upheld their end of the deal and deserve payment.Here is a link to the 16-page law journal article.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 2, 2010 03:21 PM
Posted to Indiana Law