New Voter ID Laws Jeopardize Individual Rights

The new voter identification laws, pushed by conservative legislatures in states around the country are severely limiting one of the most basic constitutional protected rights for all citizens above the age of 18: the right to cast votes in elections.  This right is in serious jeopardy as ID laws have become the vogue.  The laws are proposed under the proposition that it would limit the amount of voter fraud and thus lead to more accurate voting, but this is simply not true.

Yes, this process can lead to lower voter fraud, but voter fraud is not the problem.  According to News21 voting rights database, the number of voter identification fraud in elections in all 50 states since 2000 equal a mere 10.  Given that during that span 146 million votes were cast, resulting in false identification affecting an alleged .000007% of all votes cast, the assertion that voter ID fraud is a problem is simply a nonstarter.

However, this does severely limit the ability of people to vote.  By some estimates, around 9% of currently legal voters in Pennsylvania will not be able to vote because they do not have a government issued ID.  But Pennsylvania is just one state.  Four others have similar laws (Indiana, Tennessee, Georgia, and Kansas) and 12 more have other requirements for presenting photo ID. Strict voter ID policies limit the amount of votes cast while trying to solve a nonexistent problem.