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.

Looking to continue the spread of voter suppression laws that have popped up over the past two years, lawmakers introduced voter ID legislation in three more states last week.

Legislators in Arkansas, Montana, and New York introduced separate bills to require voters to show certain forms of government-issued photo identification or be denied their right to vote.

Two of the bills — SB 2 in Arkansas and SB 100 in New York — are the strict form of voter ID, whereby voters who don’t have an acceptable form of photo ID are simply turned away from the polls. The bill in Montana — HB 108 — allows those voters who don’t have photo ID to cast a provisional ballot.

Approximately 1 in 10 citizens lack photo ID, putting them at risk of being disenfranchised. According to the Brennan Center, minorities, senior citizens, and poor voters tend to be hardest hit by new voter ID laws.

Still, voter rights advocates needn’t sound the alarm in these three states, yet. The voter ID bills face a tough legislative future. In both Arkansas and Montana, Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature, but Democrats still control the governor’s mansion. In New York, Democrats enjoy both the governorship and the state Assembly.

For the third time in as many years, Missouri lawmakers have proposed legislation to require voter ID in the Show Me State.

This week, state Sen. Will Kraus (R) pre-filed SJR 6, a constitutional amendment which would require a voter ”to identify himself or herself as a United States Citizen and a resident of the state by producing valid, government-issued photo identification.” It would face a voter referendum if approved.

A similar measure passed the legislature earlier this year, but was struck down by a state judge before it reached the ballot because of problems with the ballot language. Republicans tried to enact voter ID in 2011 as well, but the bill was vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon (D). Nixon cannot veto constitutional amendment language, however, like Kraus has proposed.

In 2006, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down an earlier voter ID law in a 6-1 vote because it violated the state constitution’s guarantee of the right to vote. Kraus’s bill, however, would amend the state constitution to permit a voter ID requirement.

If the bill up passing, a quarter of a million Missourians could be disenfranchised. A 2009 study by Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D) identified 230,000 registered voters who may not have the necessary government-issued photo ID.

The Wisconsin state constitution forbids nearly all laws that restrict the franchise. In its words, “[e]very United States citizen age 18 or older who is a resident of an election district in this state is a qualified elector of that district.” This is why two Wisconsin courts struck down that state’s voter ID law, and it is why 132 years of Wisconsin Supreme Court precedent forbid voter suppression laws such as voter ID.

Wisconsin state Rep. Robin Vos (R), who will serve as Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly next year, thinks such robust protection of the right to vote is a problem — and it’s a problem he’s wants to solve:

VOS: I do think that having photo ID is something that is broadly supported by the public. It’s something that I really hope we have in place by the next general election. If there were some serious issues raised by the Dane County court I’m looking to fix those, but ultimately I want to make sure photo ID is the law of Wisconsin.

QUESTION: Very briefly, would you favor beginning the process of changing the state’s constitution to require photo ID because of some of the legal uncertainty around the law?

VOS: Yes, I would favor that. It also takes two sessions, so that wouldn’t be until 2015 even if we did begin that process. Hopefully we can get a statute passed that will be in effect for the 2014 election or sooner.

Watch it:

In the same interview, Vos also endorsed a proposal by Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) to make it harder to vote by eliminating same-day voter registration.

For the record, voter ID laws do not simply violate the Wisconsin Constitution, they also violate the U.S. Constitution. As the Supreme Court explained in Burdick v. Takushi, laws that place a high burden on voters in order to address a particularly weak state interest are unconstitutional. Voter ID laws potentially disenfranchise thousands of voters; and though their supporters attempt to justify them by claiming that they are necessary to prevent voter fraud, the truth is that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud at the polls. One study of Wisconsin voters determined that just 0.00023 percent of votes are the product of in-person fraud.

Nevertheless, in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board the Roberts Court refused to strike down an unconstitutional voter ID law. If President Obama has an opportunity to replace one of the Court’s conservatives, correcting the error in Crawford should be a top priority.

[HT: Amanda Terkel]

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) told a radio host he completely agreed with her assertion that investigations are needed to determine why President Obama lost “every one” of the states with photo identification requirements for voting, yet won re-election. Cuccinelli, who has lost most of the major legal cases he has brought since taking office in 2010, told the host she was “preaching to the choir.”

On WMAL radio, hosts Brian Wilson and Cheri Jacobus pressed Cuccinelli about why he has not opened a major investigation into what they suggested was wide-spread voter fraud in Virginia — an assessment they made based on receiving unproven allegations by email from listeners. Studies have shown Americans are more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud. Cuccinelli endorsed the idea of such investigations, but noted that he lacks the statutory authority to do launch an investigation.

Cuccinelli backed Jacobus on her conspiracy theories:

JACOBUS: There needs to be a way for people to be able to report this stuff and have it looked into. I mean, just across the country, we’re hearing so many stories. And people can talk about it, but nothing seems to be done. And, in fact in these states where voter ID is required to vote…

WILSON: Photo ID.

JACOBUS: Photo ID. Voter photo ID. Obama lost every one of those states. He can’t win a state where photo ID is required. So clearly there’s something going on out there and until there’s a way to have something done about it where when you report it, you know it’s going to be looked into, the other side just says “Oh, well, you’re just poor losers,” and that sort of thing.

CUCCINELLI: Your tone suggests you’re a little upset with me. You’re preaching to the choir. I’m with you completely.

Listen to the interview:

Of course, real voter fraud can be reported to local police authorities for investigation. And while just four states had strict photo ID laws in effect in the 2012 election — deep red Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, and Tennessee — seven more had some photo ID laws in effect. Of those, Obama did carry four (Florida, Hawaii, Michigan, and New Hampshire).

Cuccinelli announced in December that he will run for governor in November 2013.

A spokesman for the Attorney General later appeared to walk-back his comments, telling the Virginian-Pilot, “There is no question that President Obama legitimately won re-election. Ken was simply talking about the fact that there were problems on election day which need to be addressed.”

In an interview with Milwaukee’s ABC affiliate, the Romney campaign’s Wisconsin co-chair, state Sen. Alberta Darling (R), suggested that her candidate would have won Wisconsin but for the fact that the state’s voter ID law was declared unconstitutional by a state court:

HOST: Do you think photo ID would have made any difference in the outcome of this election?

DARLING: Absolutely, I think so. We’re looking at all different kinds of precincts and all sorts of same-day registrations and I know people will go “oh, we don’t have fraud and abuse in our elections,” but what can’t we have voter ID when the majority of the people in Wisconsin wanted it. We passed it. The governor signed it. Why should one judge in Dane County be able to hold it up?

Watch it:

There is a simple answer to Darling’s question about why voter ID cannot exist in Wisconsin — the state constitution does not allow it. Under the Wisconsin Constitution, “[e]very United States citizen age 18 or older who is a resident of an election district in this state is a qualified elector of that district,” regardless of whether or not they have an ID.

But, more importantly, Darling’s suggestion that the only thing standing in between Romney and Wisconsin’s ten electoral votes was a law targeting the virtually non-existent problem of voter fraud at the polls is ridiculous. President Obama currently leads in Wisconsin by more than 200,000 votes. So Darling is suggesting that 200,000 people somehow managed to vote twice without anyone noticing — or perhaps that one person voted 200,001 times. Either one would require a conspiracy so massive it would make Fox Mulder blush.

In reality, a study of the 2004 election in Wisconsin found that of the approximately 3 million votes cast, “only seven were declared invalid—all of which were cast by felons who had finished their sentences and didn’t realize they were still barred from voting. As a result, Wisconsin’s overall fraud rate came in at a whopping 0.00023 percent.”

Over the past two years, state legislators affiliated with the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council mounted a furious push to enact strict vote-suppressing voter ID laws. But while advocates claimed these laws are necessary to prevent voter impersonation fraud, two arrests Tuesday demonstrate that the opposite is true.

Talking Points Memo reports two Republican voters attempted to “test” whether they could commit voter fraud in New Mexico and Nevada. Neither state requires identification to vote, but both discovered that that does not equate to voter fraud being legal — or easily committed.

In Nevada, 56-year-old Roxanne Rubin, a Republican, was arrested on Nov. 2 for allegedly trying to vote twice, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The newspaper quoted a report by an investigator with the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office that said Rubin “was unhappy with the process; specifically in that her identification was not checked.” … She was arrested at the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and charged with a category “D” felony.

On Tuesday in New Mexico, a Republican poll watcher was taken into police custody after also apparently trying to test the system. According to the Las Cruces Sun-News, the man voted, then obtained a second provisional ballot and announced he was simply “testing the system to see if people could get away with voting twice.”

There are many reasons why in person voter fraud — the “problem” these voter ID laws purport to solve — is virtually non-existent. Most people accept the principle of “one person, one vote” and don’t try to cheat the system because doing so is morally wrong. Others recognize that doing so is illegal and do not want to risk being charged with a category “D” felony. And with more than 121 million votes cast in Tuesday’s presidential election, voting twice would be a hugely inefficient way to influence the election.

While polls initially showed statewide support a voter ID measure in Minnesota, once voters learned that such a measure was unnecessary (no one has ever been convicted of voter impersonation in the state’s history), would create hurdles that could keep citizens from voting, and would potentially cost the state millions, it failed with nearly 54 percent of voters refusing to back the effort.

Despite long lines, voter suppression laws and Republican efforts to discourage voting, President Obama won reelection last night. Many of these roadblocks to voting did not happen by accident. Meet five of the Republican state elections officials who spent this election cycle thwarting the franchise:

Jon Husted

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted is the Katherine Harris of 2012. Few, if any officials in the country did more to skew a state’s vote to increase Mitt Romney’s chances of winning this election. Husted advocated firmly and repeatedly to cut early voting in Ohio, potentially disenfranchising thousands of voters who lack the job flexibility to vote on election day. He openly defied a court order requiring early voting hours to be restored, although he eventually backed down after a federal ordered him to attend a court hearing regarding this refusal to comply with the law. And he retaliated against his opponents by firing them. To top it off, Husted issued a last-minute directive that directly conflicts with Ohio law which could lead to thousands of provisional ballots being trashed.

Ken Detzner

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner is Tea Party Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) hand-picked chief elections official, so he played a leadership role in Scott’s discredited plan to purge thousands of Florida voters from the state’s voter rolls. According to the Tampa Bay Times, “Hispanic, Democratic and independent-minded voters [were] the most likely to be targeted” by this purge. About 58 percent of the voters targeted by the purge are Hispanic, a demographic that overwhelmingly favored President Obama. The list of supposed non-citizens proved unreliable, however, and the purge was eventually shut down after the state’s local elections supervisors refused to move forward with it. Nevertheless, Detzner vowed to restart the purge at one point saying it was his “moral duty” to purge people from the voter rolls. To date, Florida’s purge caught just one non-citizen voter.

Scott Gessler

Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler is currently under investigation for allegedly misusing taxpayer dollars to travel to a Republican National Lawyers Association event. Even if these allegations prove false, however, Gessler has still distinguished himself through his efforts to restrict the franchise. As a candidate for his current job, Gessler campaigned on a promise to fight the wildly exaggerated problem of election fraud. As Colorado’s chief elections official, Gessler spearheaded a voter purge targeting thousands of alleged non-citizens on his state’s voter rolls. He was eventually forced to largely abandon this purge, however, after his efforts revealed that non-citizen voting is a virtually non-existent problem.

Carol Aichele

As Pennsylvania’s Secretary of the Commonwealth, Carol Aichele played a key role in defending that state’s voter ID law — despite her admission during court testimony that she does not “know what the law says.” After state officials released data indicating that 9 percent of the state’s voters lacked the ID required by the law, Aichele claimed that the real number was actually closer to 1 percent. When the Pennsylvania Supreme Court expressed skepticism that the voter suppression law would not disenfranchise voters, Aichele announced minor tweeks to the requirements to obtain an ID in Pennsylvania. The judiciary deemed this dodge insufficient, and largely suspended the law. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania continued to run misleading ads suggesting that voters must show ID in order to vote.

Matt Schultz

Like Colorado and Florida, Iowa attempted its own voter purge targeting the illusionary problem of non-citizen voting, with Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz spearheading this purge. An Iowa court temporarily blocked this purge, however, warning that it “created confusion and mistrust in the voter registration process [and] have created fear that new citizens will lose their right to vote and/or be charged with a felony and [have] caused some qualified voters to feel deterred from even registering to vote.”

Bonus: Charlie White

Indiana’s Republican former Secretary of State Charlie White was removed from office last February after he was convicted of six felony counts of perjury, theft and election fraud.

In spite of a court ruling that photo ID is not required to vote in Pennsylvania this election cycle, new reports are emerging of rampant misinformation about the law.

The October 2 ruling said that poll-workers can ask for photo ID, but cannot turn people away because they do not have it. The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that numerous polling sites are handing out information stating that photo ID is required and that poll workers are falsely stating ID is required to vote. In addition, two mailers were reportedly sent out this week that provide the same misinformation. Residents in Harrisburg, Pa. received this mailer:

The Pennsylvania Department of State produced the mailer, and it was sent out in September before the court largely blocked the state’s voter suppression law. But state department spokesman Ron Ruman said his department did not send out the bogus mailer that Harrisburg voters are receiving now. “These mailings all were sent between Sept. 17 and 24″,” Ruman told philly.com. “We are looking into this, but the Department of State did not send these cards at this time.” and said that poll-workers can ask for photo ID, but cannot turn people away because they do not have it

BoldProgressives.org is reporting that others in Pennsylvania received this mailer:

The state has been slow to correct misinformation about the law since the court blocked the voter ID requirement. But in addition to lingering advertisements that were not removed from before the ruling, the state issued newly “corrected” ads that feature an image of a photo ID with the tiny words “This election day, if you have it,” followed by the huge and capitalized phrase “Show it.” A judge declined to block these ads.

Also today in Allegheny County, a judge issued an order to halt electioneering by Republicans who were stopping people outside a polling location and asking them for identification. This activity outside the polls would be illegal regardless of the state’s photo ID law, but the “chilling effect” on voting cited by the judge is particularly significant because their activities wrongly suggest that ID is required to vote.