October 12, 2006

Editorial

Voter ID requirement alarming

What a relief. On November 7, we Ohio voters can breathe easy. We can skip to the polls with joy in our hearts, secure that our most sacred democratic right, the right to vote, has been protected. Perhaps we’ve been troubled by suggestions that tens of thousands of Ohio voters may have been disenfranchised from the voting process in 2004; now, we can happily tap-tap our electronic voting machines with the assurance that Ohio legislators, in their wisdom, have enacted House Bill 3 to protect us from further Election Day scandal.

According to the Ohio House and Senate Republicans, House Bill 3 will restore confidence in our embattled electoral system. It will accomplish that feat by requiring that Ohio voters — who apparently can’t resist the temptation to pretend to be someone they’re not — present official identification when they vote.

But wait. The 2004 Ohio Election Day problems had nothing to do with voters who pretended to be someone they weren’t. According to the Ohio League of Women Voters, which strongly opposes House Bill 3, out of the nine million votes cast in the 2002 and 2004 elections, the number found to be fraudulent was — four.

The 2004 Ohio Election Day controversies concerned thousands of votes allegedly lost when people waited hours for voting machines that were in short supply in Democratic inner cities and liberal college campuses. Machines were abundant, however, in suburban, Republican-leaning districts. Those controversies also included electronic machines which mysteriously flipped votes cast for one presidential candidate into the totals of the other. Not always, but most often, those votes went to George Bush.

House Bill 3 does not address those Election Day concerns. It does not require a random hand count of ballots to check the accuracy of electronic voting machines, which have repeatedly been shown to be vulnerable to outside tampering. And it does not address other 2004 Election Day problems, such as inadequately trained and supervised precinct workers who were poorly equipped to deal with the large voter turnout.

What House Bill 3 does do is require that legitimate citizens produce specific forms of identification in order to vote. By doing so, the bill puts obstacles in the voting process that have no business being there. While most of us can easily whip out our driver’s license or bank statement, some cannot. Those people tend to be the poor, the homeless, the elderly or the young — most of whom tend to vote Democratic. The bill has more in common with historic attempts to disenfranchise black voters in the South, such as the poll tax and literacy test, than it does with a serious attempt to reform a troubled electoral system.

The Ohio Democratic party estimates that House Bill 3 could keep 200,000 Ohioans from voting. According to the Ohio League of Women Voters, the effect of the bill “will be confusion, uncertainty, disenfranchisement, distrust and an overburdened election system.”

Ohio isn’t the only state with a Republican-controlled legislature that has instituted the requirement for voter ID. In recent years, more than 20 states have passed similar bills, and that battle is still being fought, largely along partisan lines, in up to nine states.

Usually, it feels good to vote. It feels good to take a half hour from an ordinary day to fulfill my civic responsibility. But this November 7, I don’t think I’ll feel good. And I’m pretty sure I won’t feel more confident about the Ohio electoral process. When I’m asked to produce my ID, I expect to feel both saddened and furious that Republican lawmakers seem to hold so cheaply our treasured right to vote.

— Diane Chiddister