How to increase voter turnout and decrease voter fraud

Every American has a fundamental constitutional right to fair elections and to ballot integrity. But in Arkansas, voter fraud is very easy to get away with and very hard to prove. In a nutshell, that is the reason for HB 1797: by requiring photo ID to vote, it would block polling-place vote fraud.

Some people say that requiring voter ID in order to vote would decrease turnout -- or even, in the words of the Arkansas ACLU, "disenfranchise" people. In the newest paper from the Advance Arkansas Institute, we look at the evidence, which suggests that a voter ID requirement actually increases turnout. In fact, the data from the 2008 elections reveals that states with a voter ID requirement actually saw higher turnout than states without that requirement. Read Requiring Voter ID: Bad for Voter Fraud, Good for Voter Turnout here.

The current state of the law is a bit of an embarrassment: under Arkansas law, poll workers are required to ask voters to show ID when they vote, but voters are free to decline. That rule has the primary effect of convincing law-abiding citizens that the system works while completely failing to deter someone who wants to impersonate someone else at the ballot box and commit vote fraud. If you have never watched a polling place in action, you should. You will see something very interesting: when people pull out their ID and see that there’s no requirement for the poll worker to look at it, you can almost read their mind. They’re thinking: “What’s stopping someone else from showing up and giving my name and voting for me?” The answer is: practically nothing. 

Arkansas election history, which contains at least one account in the last decade of an elected official pleading guilty to offenses involving vote fraud and another legislative election which a bipartisan legislative committee found pervaded with fraud, shows that vote fraud deserves to be addressed by the Arkansas General Assembly. On Friday, the House State Agencies Committee passed HB 1797 out of committee (see video here); the full House will vote on it this Monday.  

Update on Monday, March 21, 2011 by Dan Greenberg

UPDATE: Bill passed the House and moves on to the Senate tomorrow.