Voter ID laws, which require voters to show photo ID in order to vote, are one of the most common forms of voter suppression laws favored by Republican state lawmakers. Although the laws’ supporters claim that they are necessary to combat in-person voter fraud, a voter is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls. According to one study, a vanishingly small 0.0002 percent of votes are the product of such fraud. Instead, the primary function of voter ID laws is to make it harder for minorities, students, low-income voters — all of which are both less likely to have ID and more likely to vote for Democrats than other voter demographics — from casting a ballot.

Earlier today, Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA) introduced legislation to prevent this from happening. Under Larsen’s bill, voters disenfranchised by Republican voter ID laws could still vote in federal elections if they signed a sworn statement:

‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in subsection (c), if a State has in effect a requirement that an individual present identification as a condition of receiving and casting a ballot in an election for Federal office, the State shall permit the individual to meet the requirement—

‘‘(A) in the case of an individual who desires to vote in person, by presenting the appropriate State or local election official with a sworn written statement, signed by the individual under penalty of perjury, attesting to the individual’s identification and attesting that the individual is registered to vote in the election; or

‘‘(B) in the case of an individual who desires to vote by mail, by submitting with the ballot the statement described in subparagraph 6 (A).

The bill does contain an exception for first-time voters that register to vote by mail, but it otherwise would free federal races from one of the most common Republican voter suppression tactics.

The Constitution gives Congress broad authority to address voter suppression. Although the Constitution permits states to set “[t]he times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representative” Congress may “at any time by law make or alter such regulations.” Additionally, because of voter ID laws’ impact on minority voter, Congress should also have the authority to abolish them altogether under its power to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment’s promise that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz (R)

At a social conservatives’ conference this week, Iowa’s Secretary of State argued that Republicans need to pass voter ID in order to advance their top policy goals, including banning abortion and same-sex marriage.

Matt Schultz (R), elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010, spoke at length about his support for implementing voter ID in a speech before the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition on Monday. In the process he accused the other side of cheating in order to win elections, but provided no evidence to back up this claim:

SCHULTZ: There are a whole lot of issues that we care about, abortion, gay marriage, a whole lot of social issues that we care deeply about. But you have to start caring about voter ID and election integrity as well, because if you don’t have that, you’ll never be able to make a difference in any other issue you care about. Never. Because they will cheat! They’ll cheat. And we need to make sure we stop them. So what do I need you to do? I need you start telling your friends and neighbors that you love voter ID. You love voter ID.

Watch it:

There’s a reason why Schultz couldn’t provide any evidence that people are using voter fraud at the polls to rig elections: None exists. In-person voter fraud is extraordinarily rare; a study in nearby Wisconsin found a fraud rate of 0.0002 percent, far less common than even being struck by lightning. Still, a dearth of actual voter fraud hasn’t stopped conservatives from using it as a phantom menace to gin up support for voter ID.

Schultz isn’t the only Republican official pushing voter ID as a means for enacting the Party’s policy goals. Indeed, because approximately 1 in 10 Americans — particularly young voters and minorities, groups who tend to vote Democratic — lack photo ID, a strict voter ID requirement would help Republicans win more elections. Last year, Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai famously declared that voter ID would help Mitt Romney win the state of Pennsylvania. Wisconsin State Sen. Glenn Grothman similarly argued that voter ID would help put Romney over the edge “in a close race.”

Last week, Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (D) vetoed a bill to require all Arkansans to show photo ID before voting, calling it an “unnecessary measure that would negatively impact one of our most precious rights as citizens.” Nevertheless, the newly Republican-dominated House completed an override of Beebe’s veto on Monday, finally passing their coveted strict voter ID law after years of being stymied by Democratic majorities.

The law also requires the state to provide free photo ID to voters who don’t have one, to the tune of $300,000 in taxpayer money. Beebe blasted the bill as “an expensive solution in search of a problem.” He’s right: voter ID laws’ stated purpose is to combat in-person voter fraud, an exceedingly rare phenomenon. An individual is more likely to be struck by lightning than commit in-person voter fraud, and one Wisconsin study found an overall fraud rate of .00023 percent.

Meanwhile, these laws disenfranchise between 2 and 9 percent of voters, hitting minorities, seniors, and young people who do not or cannot get the required ID especially hard. A recent study found that young minorities were the most severely impacted by these laws; huge majorities of black and Latino youths reported being asked to show ID at the polls — even in states without voter ID laws.

In the past few years, voter ID laws have surged in popularity among Republican-dominated state legislatures. Though many were struck down in court before the 2012 election, five states — Virginia, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, and Tennessee — will have strict voter ID requirements in effect for the 2014 midterm elections. Nor does the fad seem to be dying down; a new report from ProjectVote finds that 30 states have introduced vote-suppressing laws in 2013. Of these, 20 introduced voter ID bills.

Voter ID is just one element in a phalanx of vote-suppressing laws that includes voter registration restrictions, voter purges, and limits on early voting. The model state for such efforts in the last election, Florida, experienced marathon lines and chaos at the polls. Shortly after, prominent state Republicans admitted they had pursued these measures to keep Democratic voters from casting their ballots.

Monday morning, the Republican National Committee released a lengthy “autopsy” of their 2012 electoral loss, much of which was devoted to the GOP’s weak standing among people of color. “It is imperative that the RNC changes how it engages with Hispanic communities to welcome in new members of our Party” the autopsy proclaims, and “the Republican Party must be committed to building a lasting relationship within the African American community year-round, based on mutual respect and with a spirit of caring.”

One day later, Arkansas Republicans showed their mutual respect and spirit of caring for people of color by passing a law that will keep many of them from casting a vote.

Yesterday, the Arkansas Senate passed — on an entirely party-line vote — a so-called voter ID law requiring voters to show photo identification before they can cast a ballot. The same voter suppression measure already passed the state House with all but one of the votes for the bill coming from Republicans. These laws, which are popular among Republican lawmakers, accomplish little more than disenfranchisement. Even conservative estimates suggest that these laws will prevent 2 to 3 percent of registered voters from casting a ballot. And this impact is felt hardest by low-income voters, students and people of color — all of who tend to prefer Democrats to Republicans.

The most common argument raised in favor of voter ID laws is that they prevent in-person voter fraud, but this claim cannot be squared with reality. A person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls. A Wisconsin study found that only 0.00023 percent of votes are the product of such fraud. So voter ID laws disenfranchise a large chunk of voters — between 2 and 9 percent, according to different reports on their effect — in order to prevent a virtually non-existent form of voter fraud.

The bill will now go to Gov. Mike Beebe (D-AR), who should veto it.

A new study by professors at the University of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis shows that the strict voter ID laws being pushed by Republican state legislators around the country most impact young people, especially young minorities. And given that the people pushing those measures admitted they were intended to help GOP candidates win, the analysis would suggest that the efforts are having their intended effect.

Politico reported Tuesday that the study, co-authored by Cathy J. Cohen of the University of Chicago and Jon C. Rogowski of Washington University in St. Louis, found that even in states without photo ID laws, “65.5 percent of black youth were asked to show ID at the polls, compared with 55.3 percent of Latino youth and 42.8 percent of white youth.”

Worse, the study finds, many minority young voters — including 17.3 percent of young African Americans — did not even try to vote because they lacked the required identification.
The authors noted that their findings show the problem with these suppression laws — and show the continued need for the Voting Rights Act:

“The effort to protect the vote doesn’t make sense and it’s largely discriminatory, impacting we know, young people in particular, young people of color, the poor and the elderly,” Cohen said. … Rogowski said the study will help underscore the importance of keeping Section 5 fully in place. “It’s important that we still have the ability to keep a watchful eye on these kinds of states,” Rogowski said.

Last June, Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Mike Turzai boasted that the voter ID law he helped pass would “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” In December, Republican strategist Scott Tranter acknowledged that “a lot of us are campaign professionals and we want to do everything we can to help our sides. Sometimes we think that’s voter ID, sometimes we think that’s longer lines, whatever it may be.”

Voter Suppression Advocate John Fund

Fund mocks voting rights advocates for correctly noting that Americans are more likely to be struck by lighting than to commit voter fraud:

Well, lightning is suddenly all over Cincinnati, Ohio. The Hamilton County Board of Elections is investigating 19 possible cases of alleged voter fraud that occurred when Ohio was a focal point of the 2012 presidential election. A total of 19 voters and nine witnesses are part of the probe.

Democrat Melowese Richardson has been an official poll worker for the last quarter century and registered thousands of people to vote last year. She candidly admitted to Cincinnati’s Channel 9 this week that she voted twice in the last election.

According to the Hamilton County Board of Elections, 564,429 voters are registered in jurisdiction. Even if every single one of those 19 alleged cases proved true, that would represent less than 0.0034 percent of the county’s voters.

In Richardson’s case, she told the television station that she had not intended to commit vote fraud and merely showed up to vote in-person as she was unsure her absentee ballot would arrive in time to be counted. The story notes that the elections board’s report “states poll workers should have updated the signature poll book by flagging ‘absentee voter’ next to the names of those who appeared on the list.”

Regardless of Richardson’s intent, however, the National Review’s bait and switch is obvious. Requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls would do absolutely nothing to prevent double voting like this — intentional or inadvertent. Richardson truthfully identified herself at the polls and voted in her own name. Fund attempts to lump all types of voter fraud in together, but does not identify a single one of the 19 alleged cases in which a voter committed in-person impersonation of another voter.

Furthermore, these cases show that the existing laws successfully catch those who vote twice. While she could not comment on the ongoing investigation, Hamilton County Deputy Director of Elections Sally J. Krisel told ThinkProgress that “Ohio has very clear laws about checking,” so if a voter is found to have cast an absentee ballot and attempts to vote in person, only one vote is counted. And, based on the Channel 9 report, the 19 questioned voters have been subpoenaed — meaning they will be prosecuted if they indeed committed voter fraud.

Fund snidely concludes: “But, of course, as you know there is no voter fraud. Pay no attention to that lightning coming out of Ohio.” While voter fraud does rarely exist, fighting these sorts of “lightning” with strict photo ID laws that disenfranchise legitimate voters is like banning orange juice to prevent jaywalking.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Virginia House and Senate passed two bills to make the state’s voter ID law even stricter. The measures, sponsored by Sen. Dick Black (R-VA) and Rep. Mark Cole (R-VA), would ban voters from presenting a utility bill, pay stub, government or Social Security card as proof of identity — all forms of ID allowed under the current law. They could still use a voter ID card, concealed handgun permit, drivers license, or student ID. But the Senate is also considering a bill that would even further restrict acceptable voting ID to photo IDs only.

Though Virginians endured marathon voting lines on November 6, with voters still waiting hours after polls officially closed, Republicans still claim that voting in the state is too easy. Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA) recently called for stricter photo ID requirements because Obama “can’t win a state where photo ID is required.”

Virginia’s current voter ID law was one of the few approved by the Department of Justice, as it did not disproportionately impact minority voting rights. But if these new measures are signed into law, Virginia’s voter ID law will resemble the one in Texas that was struck down in court because it clearly disenfranchised minority voters. The DOJ estimated at least 600,000 voters would have been affected by Texas’ law — hitting minority and low-income communities hardest. If the U.S. Supreme Court decides to strike down the section of the Voting Rights Act that protects minorities’ voting rights, Virginia, Texas, and other states would be allowed to disenfranchise these voters.

Since Obama won the state in 2012, the Republican-dominated Virginia legislature has been accelerating their push to disenfranchise certain voters. While Democrats were distracted by the inauguration, Virginia Republicans quietly passed a gerrymandering plan to erase at least one Democratic seat. The state also considered a scheme to rig their electoral college votes and dilute minority voting power.

A Virginia General Assembly member intends to add more limits to the state’s voter ID law in time for the next election, warning of voter impersonation. Republican Delegate Mark Cole (VA) thinks the standing law is too flexible and will introduce a new voter ID bill that would prevent voters from using documentation like paycheck stubs to prove their identity.

Cole claims that, hypothetically, someone could pose as a legitimate voter at the polls, even though voter fraud has been proven to be exceedingly rare. But Republicans have used the threat of voter fraud to introduce more hurdles for minority voters, seniors, students to cast their ballots. Virginia Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli (R) recently called for stricter requirements because Obama “can’t win a state where photo ID is required.”

Virginia’s voter ID law, while unnecessary, was less burdensome than strict ID rules in other states. Virginia’s law allowed voters to use a voter registration card, Social Security card, driver’s license, government-issued ID, photo ID from their job, utility bill, paycheck, bank statement, government check or a current Virginia college ID. It was also one of the few laws cleared by the Justice Department because it would not disproportionately harm minority voters’ rights.

But Cole’s new voter ID proposal would only let voters use government-issued ID, a social security card or a voter registration card, resembling other voter ID laws that were struck down in court because they were found to have a disproportionate impact on minorities, low-income voters, and seniors.

The plan would undoubtedly add to the problems exposed in the dysfunctional 2012 election. Virginian voters waited in marathon lines long after polls were officially closed, while a GOP firm was caught tampering with voter registration forms. The state also spent nearly $2 million in taxpayer money to send all registered voters a legitimate ID card.