Opinion

Idaho House Passes Revamped Voter ID Bill

By Sharon Fisher, 3-01-10

A revamped bill requiring people to show a photo ID before voting—but which allows people without such IDs to vote by signing an affidavit—passed the Idaho House yesterday, 64-6. A similar bill last year was withdrawn at the request of the Secretary of State, and worked on over the summer.

In addition to the affidavit provision, the revamped bill now also doesn’t include vote-by-mail or absentee voting, which sponsor House Majority Leader Mike Moyle, R-Star, said he planned to address in a separate bill, as well as another bill requiring photo ID to register to vote."It doesn’t go as far I’d like it to go,” he said. He didn’t say whether he planned to do either of those additional bills this session.

A number of other states have implemented or are working on implementing similar provisions, which are said to be intended to combat voter fraud but which some feel are intended to discourage people from voting who are seen as more likely to vote Democratic: the young, the old, the disabled,the poor, and minorities.

“Although most Americans have government-issued photo ID, studies show that as many as 12% of eligible voters nationwide do not; the percentage is even higher for seniors, people of color, people with disabilities, low-income voters, and students,” said the Brennan Center for Justice, which follows the issue, on its website. “Many of those citizens find it hard to get such IDs, because the underlying documentation (the ID one needs to get ID) is often difficult to come by. Those difficulties will increase substantially if documentary proof of citizenship is needed to vote or to obtain the identification required to vote.”

(Ironically, part of the reason Idaho rejected the Federal government’s attempts to mandate a standard form for drivers’ licenses, the REAL ID Act, in 2007 was because of the burden it would place on certain Idahoans – particularly the elderly – to produce the documents necessary to obtain such a license.)

The debate in the House was generally partisan, though several Democrats voted in favor of the bill and one Republican, Representative Tom Trail, Moscow, voted against it. Several of the Democrats who debated against the bill, including Representatives Branden Durst and Brian Cronin, both of Boise, said they were generally supportive of it but had concerns about some aspects of it.

Representative Donna Boe, D-Pocatello, expressed concern that such a law would decrease Idaho’s voter participation, which she said was 60 percent in 2006. It’s “one more barrier to voters who choose to vote or who are thinking of going to the polls to vote,” she said. She also cited statistics that she said came from the League of Women Voters, about the percentage of members in certain groups not having a photo ID, such as 18 percent of people over 65, and 15 percent of low-income voters.

Debate in favor of the bill—which included several people referring to the vote using terms such as “sacred” and “honor”—included a number of specious arguments. For example, when Boe asked how much of an issue voter fraud was in Idaho, Moyle said that he wasn’t aware of any, but without a photo ID requirement, there was no way to tell. In addition, Representative Robert Schaefer, R-Nampa, said he knew voter fraud was “real and pervasive” in some areas of the country, because he had gotten 990,000 hits on the term “voter fraud” from an Internet search engine. Representative Dell Raybould, R-Rexburg, said that while voter fraud had never been proven, there were “rampant rumors” of it during most elections.

Several people, including Representative JoAn Wood, R-Rigby, speaking in favor of the bill brought up the issue of mailings to people at their voting address and having the mailings returned, and using that as proof of voter fraud. Speaker of the House Lawerence Denney, R-Midvale, reportedly made a similar attempt last year, according to Betsy Russell at the Spokesman Review. “Denney told Eye on Boise that he and Senate President Pro-Tem Bob Geddes mailed out nearly 200 first-class letters to registered voters in a single district after the last election as a test, and about 30 came back showing “no one at that address.” Some of the addresses were vacant lots, he said. The letters should have been forwarded if the people and addresses were real, he said. “They should not have come back to us.””

This technique, known as “caging,” has been criticized across the U.S., and thrown out by some courts in which it was attempted. “The fact that the mailings used to cage voters have had ‘do not forward’ printed on them resulted in disproportionately disfranchising of students away at college, citizens who move often, and soldiers overseas,” describes the Wikpedia entry on the technique.

Such returns have less to do with fraud and more to do with updating voter rolls—a point to which Wood alluded while making her argument.

Falsifying an affidavit—which Moyle said would be a public record and could be checked if desired—would be a felony. While an attempt was made in the State Affairs committee to change this to a misdemeanor and a $500 fine, Moyle reportedly told Representative Phylis King, D-Boise, who had made the motion, “If you think it’s OK for 500 bucks to throw out a fraudulent vote, I have a problem with that.” That motion failed.

If passed, the bill will not take effect by this spring’s primaries, but could take effect by the November election, Moyle said.

Ironically, the one person convicted of voter fraud in Idaho in recent memory was Walter Coiner, last December. He voted by absentee ballot in Twin Falls and in person in Ketchum—actions which, incidentally, would not have been prevented with the voter ID bill passed today. Coiner is related to Senator Chuck Coiner, R-Twin Falls.

Sharon Fisher is a member of AARP Idaho’s Capitol City Task Force, a volunteer advocacy organization that took a position on the voter ID bill.

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