Take a look at this list of states:

Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Indiana
Louisiana
Michigan
South Dakota
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Kentucky
Missouri
Montana
North Dakota
Ohio
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
Washington

You will notice Wisconsin is not on the list. That is because the list includes states that either request or require identification to vote.

Presenting identification at the polls is not a barrier or hardship to vote. In fact, The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) writes, “In no state is a voter who cannot produce identification turned away from the polls—all states have some sort of recourse for voters without identification to cast a vote.  However, in Georgia and Indiana, voters without ID vote a provisional ballot, and must return to election officials within a few days and show a photo ID in order for their ballots to be counted.”

Here is the NCSL rundown on what other states require for voting.

Keep in mind why Wisconsin does not have a photo ID law on the books. Governor Doyle and state Senate Democrats killed any chance of a photo ID requirement being in place for the critical November elections when the governor vetoed photo ID legislation three times and Senate Democrats refused to allow a vote on a photo ID constitutional amendment. A common sense photo ID requirement would not be an obstacle to voting or hamper the process.

That’s the assessment of a new report by the Pew Center on the States on electionline.org. A record number of voter registrations and predicted high turnouts will put heavy pressure on various voting systems around the country that continue to be plagued by glitches.

The report, “Election Preview 2008: What if We Had an Election and Everyone Came?” sums up Wisconsin:

”The statewide voter registration database was finally completed and made compliant with federal law over the summer, two years later than planned. However hiccups still emerged when the state started matching voter information with information in the department of motor vehicles database and found one in five records did not match due to issues such as typos, transposed letters or numbers, or using middle names for one record but not the other. And as in several other battleground states, there has been partisan fighting over voter eligibility and allegations of fraudulent voter registration forms being submitted.”

Nationally, the report describes America’s voting system as one that, “while still in flux with a host of changes since 2001, will, ready or not, face its greatest challenge in a high-stakes contest with massive turnout.” Here are some of the concerns raised in the report:

1) There has been a huge increase in voter registrations. How the information was gathered has come into questions with labor unions, community groups, advocacy organizations and others coming under heavy scrutiny.

2) Eligibility for college students, especially those who come to universities from out-of-state, has raised eyebrows.

3) Election Day registration is available in eight states, including Wisconsin. The surge in voter registrations makes the timeliness of registration-application processing an issue.

4) As a safety net, voters who believe that they are registered or fail to present proper ID are given d provisional ballots as required by the Help America Vote Act, HAVA. However, there is no uniformity among the states. More than half of the states require voters to be in the correct precinct to have their provisional ballots eligible for counting.

5) Record numbers of provisional ballots are predicted. In close races, decisions to accept or reject ballots could be pivotal to election outcomes.

6) Military personnel and civilian citizens abroad sill face problems, including relying on slow and/or unreliable foreign mail services and  rules that can require witnesses or difficult-to-find notaries to substantiate ballots.

Stateline.org has an article on the report. 

You can read the lengthy report here. 

Read my previous blogs on this issue:

Predictions of an error-filled Election Day appear to be true 

A Photo ID requirement is not the problem in our election system 

On February 4, 2008, I agreed with pessimistic forecast that there would be major problems with our elections this year. My blog quoted Dr. Robert A. Pastor, director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University in Washington, DC:

“Voters are likely to face hassles with registration lists and voting machines. Poll workers will remain under-trained and overworked. Election management remains under the thumb of partisan officials, and voter identification is likely to remain problematic. 2008 is unlikely to be an improvement over 2006.”

You can read my entire blog here. 

Seven months later, the Washington Post concurs, reporting that, “election officials across the country are bracing for long lines, equipment failures and confusion over polling procedures that could cost thousands the chance to cast a ballot.” 

The tragedy is that Wisconsin does not require photo ID’s to vote. Governor Doyle and state Senate Democrats killed any chance of a photo ID requirement being in place for the critical November elections when the governor vetoed photo ID legislation three times and Senate Democrats refused to allow a vote on a photo ID constitutional amendment. A common sense photo ID requirement would not be an obstacle to voting or hamper the process. Such a law would be a great step in cleaning up an election system in disrepair.

Photo ID opponents in Wisconsin, albeit a minority, got their wish. Even so, it appears there are going to be  many problems on Election Day, here and across the country.

With more and more citizens demanding a photo ID requirement to vote, there is another trend that is slowly developing in American elections.

The number of people who prefer not to vote in-person on Election Day and would rather mail in their vote is increasing. In fact, the state of Oregon is the first and only state in the country where all voting is done by mail. Other states are taking notice and have either implemented the system in some areas or are exploring the concept.

One of the reasons for the increase in mail voting is the relative ease of obtaining an absentee ballot. All a voter need do in many states is request an absentee ballot. No reason or explanation is necessary.

Governing Magazine goes so far as to say, “The traditional precinct election, where everyone shows up on the appointed day, is in the process of decline.”

Most states use an election system that is part in-person, part mail-in. But the eyes of election officials are on Oregon because its system is thought to be simpler, not to mention more convenient for voters who have time to study and research ballots before making choices. Once the ballot is filled out, it can be mailed or dropped off at government offices.

Supporters also claim since voters gets ballots a few weeks before election, they serve as reminders that will lead to people casting votes even in low-profile elections where they may have otherwise forgot or were unaware. Even so, requiring ballots to be mailed in has increased voter participation only slightly.

Some election officials value a mailing system, not because of convenience or simplicity, but out of necessity. The average poll worker in America is 72 years old. The number of precinct stations to vote is dropping. If voters are required to mail in ballots, the need for polling places and poll workers disappears.

If the system is so appealing, why aren’t more states jumping on the bandwagon? One reason is the ease with which absentee ballots are available. There is also concern about fraud, undue pressure applied to a voter from a family member, and the sanctity of the secret ballot lost now that it has left the polling place.

Clearly this is an election issue that will receive further study and a great amount of attention in the future all across the country.

Here is the story from Governing Magazine. 

Here are details on obtaining an absentee ballot in Wisconsin.

This morning, I was a guest of Joy Cardin’s on Wisconsin Public Radio. We discussed the issue of requiring a photo ID to vote.

You can hear the interview by clicking “Listen” below. My interview is 18:40 into the program.

Joy makes reference to a column I recently wrote on photo ID. You can read it here.

Just about everyone in every group in America supports voter ID, and almost no one is excluded from voting by this requirement.

Those are the findings of a survey written about by MIT Department of Political Science Professor Stephen Ansolabehere in February 2007. During 2006, a collaborative survey project among 37 universities included a 36,500 person national sample survey, called the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES).

The survey was taken of people who voted in 2006 elections and was conducted in three timeframes: August-September 2006, October 2006, and November 2006.

Here are the key findings pertaining to voter ID. A large majority of all respondents expressed support for the requirement, over 75 percent with 17 percent opposed, and eight percent unsure.

It doesn’t matter what part of the country the question is asked. The majority of voters endorse voter ID. The highest level of support is in the South where every state has some form of ID requirement to vote. An incredible 81 percent supports voter ID in the South, with three-fourths of voters in the Midwest and West and just over two-thirds of voters in the Northeast like the idea.

What is the breakdown by political persuasion? Ansolabehere writes:

“Ninety-five percent of people who identify as Conservatives or as Republicans support voter identification requirements. Slightly more than 7 in 10 moderates and Independents supported the voter identification rule. Two-thirds of Democrats supported the idea, as did 60 percent of people who identify as Liberal and 50 percent of those who identify as very liberal. The very high support among Democratic voters comes as something of a surprise considering the very strong opposition to the voter identification proposal from Democratic congressional leaders and members.”

The biggest surprise from the survey came with race. Ansolabehere writes:

“The surprise was the lack of division. Over 70 percent of Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks support the requirement. Black and Hispanic voters did not express measurably less support for voter identification requirements than whites. The Congressional Black Caucus and the Democratic Party leadership were wholly out of step with the analogous segments of the electorate on this issue. The lowest levels of support (and again it’s a majority) came from White Democrats and White Liberals.”

The true test of voting requirements that include identification according to Ansolabehere is in the rate such laws exclude or prevent people from casting ballots. The MIT professor offers the reminder that the Help America Vote Act created a fail-safe mechanism: the provisional ballot. If a voter’s name is not on a list or questions a rise, the individual can cast a ballot that is verified later. Studies done by the Election Assistance Commission conclude that approximately two percent of ballots cast in 2004 were provisional. About two-thirds of those were valid, and most of those consisted of people who were not in fact registered.

The MIT survey found, as Ansolabehere puts it that, “Almost no one was excluded from voting. Only 23 people in the entire 36,500 person sample said that they were not allowed to vote because of voter identification requirements. That figure translates into approximately one-tenth of one percent of voters. The real lesson from the data is that the total number of people who said they were not allowed to vote because of voter identification requirements is trivially small.”

What about race? Ansolabehre writes:

“Exclusions because of voter qualification questions showed no racial differences. Of those Election Day voters whose registration was problematic, 70 percent were white, 16 percent were black, and 10 percent were Hispanic. Across all racial groups 85 to 86 percent were allowed to cast regular ballots and 13 to 14 percent cast provisional ballots. It is rare in survey data that a true zero arises. The number of people who said they were excluded from the polls as a result of voter identification requirements, however, is approaching that limit.”

Ansolabehere is blunt in his conclusions:

“Voter identification is the controversy that isn’t. Almost no one is excluded by this requirement, and when problems arise there is now a reasonable fail safe mechanism. It is not surprising, then, that large majorities in the public support the idea.

It is charged that voter id requirements are used to discriminate against people, especially racial minorities, and that has a chilling effect. That almost no one is prevented from voting because of voter id requirements casts doubt on arguments from the left that this amounts to a new poll tax or literacy test.

It is also hard to imagine how id requirements could have a chilling effect, if they are rarely used to prevent people from voting. The poll tax, literacy test, and other tools of the Jim Crow laws are powerful metaphors derived from a very ugly period in American history. Id requirements in practice bear absolutely no resemblance to such discriminatory practices. This is simply not a case of voter intimidation. Almost no one in the survey (less than one tenth of one percent of voters) reported that they could not vote.”

Here is survey data breaking down responses from various groups. You will see two numbers. The first is the percentage that supports voter ID from that particular group. The second is the percentage of the group that was prevented from voting because of voter ID:


All Respondents 77% / 0.1% 

Northeast 68% /0.1% 

Midwest 76% /0.2% 

South 81% /0.1% 

West 76% /0.1% 

Democrats 67% / 0.2% 

Republicans 95% /0.1% 

Independents 72% /0.1% 

Very Liberal 51% /0.2% 

Liberal 61% /0.3% 

Moderate 74% /0.1% 

Conservative 95% / 0.1% 

Very Conservative 95% / 0.0% 

Whites 77% /0.1% 

Blacks 70% /0.4% 

Hispanic 78% /0.1% 


Here are some other numbers closer to home to consider.

April 1, 2008, Wisconsin voters decided a statewide referendum about the Frankenstein veto. With 99% of the vote reporting, 567,913 (71%) voted in favor of the constitutional amendment to end the veto, and 237, 338 (29%) voted no. That means at least 805,251 people in Wisconsin voted on the veto issue.

Probably about 805,000 and maybe more Wisconsin voters would like to go to the polls and cast a ballot about a photo ID requirement for voting in our state.

It is sad and unfortunate that 19 individuals, Governor Doyle and 18 state Senate Democrats block voter ID in Wisconsin. Governor Doyle vetoed voter ID three times.  Senate Democrats refused to bring the issue to the Senate floor March 6, 2008, days before the end of the 2007-2008 General Session of the Legislature. The Constitutional Amendment process is dead and must start over with approval during the 2009-2010 session of the Legislature and the 2011-2012 session of the Legislature. The only other option is to convince Governor Doyle to approve and not veto a photo ID bill. 

Governor Doyle and Senate Democrats are, in essence, standing in the way, obstructing the will of hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin citizens denying them an opportunity to speak out on election reform.

Here is Ansolabehre’s entire paper about voter ID.

Today on the Senate floor, there was a motion to bring Assembly Joint Resolution 17 (AJR 17) to the floor for a vote. AJR 17 is the constitutional amendment to require a photo ID to vote. AJR 17 allows you to express your desires about photo ID at the voting booth.

The motion to bring the resolution to the floor was a motion to suspend the rules of the Senate that required a two-thirds vote.

All Senate Republicans voted to take up the constitutional amendment.

All Senate Democrats except one  voted against bringing the constitutional amendment to the floor.

The motion failed 15-17.

Senate Democrats continue to obstruct the opportunity for you to express your will about requiring a photo ID to vote. Studies show overwhelmingly that people want photo ID as a requirement to vote.

I issued the following press release this morning on photo ID:

With critical state primaries coming very soon and the Presidential election in November, states are not prepared to effectively handle 2008 elections.

That’s the opinion of Dr. Robert A. Pastor, director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University in Washington, DC.

Pastor says the majority of states have failed to adopt or even embrace reforms that would restore confidence and trust in America’s flawed election system. As a result, Pastor says problems with this year’s elections are inevitable.

The biggest problem according to Pastor will be voter registration lists. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 gave the states until January 1, 2006 to complete integrated, interactive lists. A few states have yet to comply. There has not been a thorough review to determine the quality of the lists. So a number of problems are still likely to occur in this year’s primary and general elections. Pastor also points out “about one third of the states have bottom-up databases that rely on counties and municipalities to retain their own registration lists and submit information to the state rather than the other way around. In contrast, top-down lists typically deliver information in real time.”

There are problems with new computerized systems that have replaced archaic punch card and lever voting. A paper trail is necessary in the event of recounts, but Congress has failed to fund and provide voter-verified paper-audit trails. Some states are so concerned that they are thinking about dumping their electronic voting systems in favor of a paper system prior to the November election.

Pastor says, “Poll workers are overworked and underpaid. They put in a 14- to 16-hour workday, face complex job requirements after little training and generally receive scant compensation.”

Little progress has been made on photo ID’s. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the issue is scheduled this summer.

Pastor’s gloomy summary is that, “Voters are likely to face hassles with registration lists and voting machines. Poll workers will remain under-trained and overworked. Election management remains under the thumb of partisan officials, and voter identification is likely to remain problematic. 2008 is unlikely to be an improvement over 2006.”

Pastor’s employer, the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University released a study last month providing more evidence that photo ID’s are not obstacles to voting.

A random sample of registered voters in Indiana, Mississippi and Maryland found that only 1.2 percent of registered voters lack a government-issued photo ID.

More than two-thirds of all registered voters in the three states believe the electoral system would be trusted more if people had to show an ID to vote.

The study also demonstrates that a very small percentage of registered voters will be adversely affected by a photo ID requirement.

Nearly a quarter of the registered voters in the three states lack confidence that their votes will be counted accurately, and an even greater number perceive that fraud is more widespread than experts believe.

Other key findings:

The issue of showing a photo ID as a requirement of voting does not appear to be a serious concern in the three surveyed states.

Almost all registered voters have an acceptable form of photo ID available (e.g., driver’s license, passport, military ID or some combination of these documents).

About 1.2 percent of registered voters do not have a photo ID, but half of those have documents proving citizenship, and most of the states have provisional or absentee ballots or other exceptions that could permit people to vote.

Registered voters without photo IDs tended to be female, African-American, and Democrat. However, that number of registered voters in the survey was too small (24 of 2,000) to draw definitive conclusions about this group.

A much larger problem among poor and minorities is not registered voters without IDs, but those who are not registered.

More than 97 percent of all registered voters in the three states surveyed could produce proof of citizenship, either a birth certificate, a passport, or naturalization papers.

Nearly one-fifth of registered voters saw or heard of fraud at their own polling place, and an even larger number, 64 percent of all respondents - reported hearing of fraud elsewhere.

Nearly all, 96 percent of voters in this study said showing a photo ID would not make them less likely to vote.

Opposition to voter IDs has come largely from those who fear that this requirement will disenfranchise voters who do not have IDs or would find it difficult to acquire them. But they were unable to locate a single individual in Indiana who was prevented from casting a ballot because they lacked an ID.

Here is the full report, Voter IDs Are Not the Problem: A Survey of Three States.

Here is John Fund’s entire opinion piece.

Last November, I blogged about the findings by the Legislative Audit Bureau that sent a clear message that Wisconsin needs to enact a photo ID requirement to vote. 

The audit I blogged about is mentioned in a USA TODAY article about problems with voting systems around the country. USA TODAY reports that under the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), states are required to have statewide voter databases completed by January 1, 2006. Nine states missed the deadline, including Wisconsin. The recent audit in Wisconsin, as USA TODAY points out, has numerous flaws.

To say the least, it is very disheartening that five years after passage of HAVA and with the Iowa caucuses unfolding, and Wisconsin’s Presidential primary right around the corner, our nation’s voting system is in disarray.

Here’s the USA TODAY article.

• In more than 100 cases, people voted twice, used phony names or addresses, or used the names of dead people.
• More than 200 felons voted illegally.
• The number of votes counted exceeds the number of votes recorded by more than 4,600.