One Person, No Vote

Voter ID laws supposedly combat fraudulent votes from dead citizens, multiple adults in the same household, and vacant lots. While these instances rarely happen, 33 states now have some voter ID law that affects numbers of Americans.

The 2000 election had signs of subterfuge. The St. Louis, Missouri election board illegally purged 50,000 names in Democrat-leaning precincts without alerting those affected, leading to Election Day delays. When Democrats received court approval to extend polling hours, Bush campaign lawyer Mark “Thor” Hearne and Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond convinced the court to reverse the decision. When the state investigated Bond’s claims of impending fraud, it found four malfeasance cases out of 2.3 million voters.

Florida’s governor was George W. Bush’s brother, and the Secretary of State was a co-chair of his state campaign. Using fixers and an allegedly unbiased legal advisor, they raised qualifications for an intended vote, allowed recounts for only broken machines as opposed to malfunctioning machines, shrunk deadlines, and gave preferential guidelines to Republican counties.

Congress launched a bipartisan commission afterward to restore confidence in elections, resulting in the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA). While the HAVA enabled operational upgrades, Bond added a “poison pill” recommendation for voter identification rules even though the commission found that 19 million voters nationwide do not have a driver’s license or state-issued voter ID (51).