Voter ID System: Bad Deal For Good Politics

By Jessica Peck Corry, 7-26-07

I asked a consultant friend to look up my identification with a GOP database. 

It was scary how much the GOP knew about me.  I’m a pro-life, twenty-something Republican.  This they had right.  But what was written next to these identifying characteristics couldn’t be further than the truth. The system identified me as “Buchanan Republican.” With all due respect, the divisive Buchanan would be my last choice for president.

The voter ID system (or the partisan volunteer operating it) must not have had room to record information about the other issues important in my life—like my passionate views in favor of ending the drug war or my support in backing measures to recognize the legitimacy of same-sex civil unions.  Neither of these positions — which frequently help determine how I vote — are shared by Buchanan.

Listen to political strategists and they’ll tell you they’ve got voter identification down to a science. They can trek down any street in any precinct and tell you everything from who voted for Bill Clinton to who has a son fighting in Iraq. The purpose, of course, is to help candidates connect with voters and ultimately to help them craft political positions that have broad appeal. 

The systems, available to candidates in a particular party or state, compile voter information, including age, past voting history, party identification, and any other characteristics that can be found, including gun ownership, number of children, veteran status, disabilities, and economic standing.

At first glance, it looks like a good idea. Upon closer examination, however, it reveals gross inadequacies that promise only to weaken the art of politics. As in my case, voters are frequently just too complicated to put in a single box.

I used to be a believer. I attempted to utilize the GOP voter ID system in 2004 when I ran for political office. My campaign team decided to abandon such efforts, however, after we saw that identifications were frequently inaccurate – and thus offensive to voters. In cases where the information was correct, many voters wondered aloud how I’d learned so much about them. They were turned off that we knew their views on abortion or taxes or the local school district.

In the place of computerized walk lists, we launched a (gasp) old-fashioned campaign where we walked from neighborhood to neighborhood, talking with people not based on their political ideology, but on whether they answered their door.

It wasn’t the most efficient system, but it was authentic. In the end, we lost the bid for Colorado Senate—but proudly managed to run the closest contest in the state, only narrowly edged out by a two-term incumbent who outspent us $400,000. 

Of course, strategists will concede that voter ID systems could never be perfect. They are intended merely as a general guidebook on issues, trends, and problems important to voters. This may be all well and good, but when candidates use this data as the primary source for making policy statements and strategic maneuvers, they fail the essence of our political system—being true to the ideology that first served as inspiration to run.

Voter ID systems also fail to acknowledge the importance of personality. As voters, we frequently vote personality over ideology. While Colorado voters overwhelmingly re-elected Bill Owens as Republican governor in the late 1990s, they denied the governor’s mansion to Congressman Bob Beauprez just a few years later. Despite the fact that Beauprez was the closest thing we had to the popular Owens, voters elected Democrat Bill Ritter by nearly 60 percent.

When I look at candidates, I just want someone that will tell me the truth about his or her views.  Sadly, the art of politics is being lost to an Orwellian system that seeks to put us all in a box. No wonder we’re all suffocating from the boredom and fatigue of modern day politics. 

Editor’s note: Jessica Peck Corry’s weekly blogs are part of a new feature on NewWest.Net/Politics called “Diary of a Mad Voter,” a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. Check back this week at www.newwest.net/madvoter.