Warrensburg – Voter identification – a measure Republicans say is necessary to prevent voter fraud, but Democrats say will succeed only in disenfranchising, potentially, more than 200,000 Missouri voters – will appear on the Nov. 8 ballot.
Gov. Jay Nixon had to set an election date after the General Assembly agreed to put the constitutional amendment before voters.
The Missouri Supreme Court ruled against past state photo-ID measures. The proposed amendment could trump the court’s legal objections.
Secretary of State Jason Kander, a Democrat, said passage potentially could disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters. Former Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, also a Democrat, made the same claim.
The leading Republicans running for Kander’s seat are photo voter ID supporters: state Sen. Will Kraus and Jay Ashcroft, son of former U.S. Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft.
A U.S. Senate candidate, Kander does not seek another term as secretary of state. The leading Democrat in the race, Robin Smith, a former anchor at KMOV-TV, St. Louis, opposes the amendment.
“… You’re taking away their constitutional right to vote,” Smith said on KMOX radio, St. Louis.
In Missouri, the American Association of Retired People urged opposition to the bill.
“Many older Missourians, who no longer drive, allow their driver’s licenses to expire. Most of the instances that a non-driver would need a photo ID can be handled by an expired driver’s license. And many Missourians never see a need to have a state-issued identification card,” AARP stated. “Urge your legislators to oppose these dangerous measures that could deprive Missourians of their right to vote.”
How do the tens of thousands of Missourians, who could be disenfranchised if the amendment passes, compare to the number of people who commit voter impersonation? The numbers are about 220,000-0.
“That’s fair,” Kander said Tuesday.
As Missouri’s chief election officer, Kander created the Elections Integrity Unit. The unit by 2014 had responded to 97 election complaints, referring 20 to prosecutors, but not one complaint involved voter impersonation. Kander said his unit has continued to operate and results have not changed with regard to voter impersonation.
“I have done more potential election violation investigations than any secretary of state and still there have been no reported cases of voter impersonation fraud at all,” he said. “That is the only form of voter fraud that photo ID law can even pretend to prevent. And given that there have been zero reported cases of that form of fraud, that says volumes about the legislation.”
If passed, the measure could prevent, possibly, some elderly, poor and handicapped voters from casting ballots.
“It is frustrating when there are politicians who want to approach this in a very political way,” Kander said.
Other politicians who oppose requiring photo IDs to vote are more direct, with Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders referring to such requirements as “Jim Crow laws.”
“Here in Alabama, without the right kind of ID, it’s nearly impossible to vote,” Clinton said in October. “It’s hard to believe we are back having this same debate about whether every American gets a chance to vote. This is a blast from the Jim Crow past.”
The absence of voter-impersonation fraud in Missouri is the rule, not the exception, nationally.
The investigative reporting group, News 21, created a data base involving all voting fraud reports for every state, including Missouri. The research went back 12 years and found that, out of 146 million registered voters, a case of voter impersonation fraud occurred once out of every 15 million votes.
In perspective, 2,757,000 Missourians voted in the last presidential election for all candidates, meaning that five presidential elections would have to be held in this state before one case of voter impersonation fraud might surface, based on the national average.
Washington University voting rights teacher Denise Lieberman, St. Louis, testified before the House Elections Committee on Missouri’s 2014 voter ID bill that there is no voter impersonation in the state. She said the bill would relegate tens of thousands of Missourians to second-class citizenship.
Politifact Missouri, which tests assertions by politicians for truth, analyzed this assertion by photo voter ID advocate Kraus: “There’s over 16 people in the state of Missouri who have been convicted of some type of voter fraud. That shows people in the state of Missouri are trying to cheat elections.”
The analysis resulted in this conclusion: 17 cases of voter fraud have occurred since 2004 and all involved fake voter registration, which passing a photo ID would not stop.
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©2016 The Daily Star-Journal (Warrensburg, Mo.)
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