Thread: NC GOP bill proposes photo IDs for voters

http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dl ... /605310307

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

GOP bill proposes photo IDs for voters

By Mark Binker
Staff Writer

RALEIGH — North Carolina would join a growing number of states that require picture identification before allowing someone to vote under a bill filed by Sen. Phil Berger last week.

Berger, an Eden Republican who represents Rockingham County and parts of Guilford County, said the measure would bolster confidence in the state’s elections and prevent fraud.

It’s unclear how far Berger’s bill will proceed this year, but similar measures in other states have been controversial. In Georgia, for example, advocates in a long-running dispute say the requirement will disenfranchise thousands of voters.

"We’re long past the days where election judges knew everybody who came into the voting precinct," Berger said. "There may be pushback, but it just seems to me to be a common-sense kind of requirement to make sure our process accurately reflects the sense of those people who are eligible voters."

Current requirements, laid down by federal law and adopted by North Carolina, only require voters to present identification at the polls if they registered through the mail and are voting for the first time. Otherwise, a voter only has to give a name and address and sign a form.

"It’s just become a way of life in our current culture to require a photo identification," said Thor Hearne, national counsel for the American Center for Voting Rights, a nonprofit group that backs the photo-identification requirement. Hearne points to problems in Michigan where dead people were reported as having voted in the 2004 election as a reason to require photo identification.

Hearne’s group is criticized by advocates on the flip side of the issue as a partisan Republican organization. Hearne readily acknowledges his GOP ties. The group’s chairman, Brian Lunde, was a co-chairman of Democrats for Bush in 2004.

In the Georgia legislature, votes on 2005 and 2006 versions of voter identification requirements largely broke down along party lines, with Republicans supporting the measure and Democrats opposed.

Berger’s bill has 20 additional co-sponsors, all Republicans.

"The Republicans obviously think this is a way to suppress turnout," said Emmet Bondurant, the lead lawyer fighting the Georgia law. He said that such requirements disproportionately affect poor, minority and elderly voters.

That’s despite a requirement in the Georgia law — and in the bill drafted for North Carolina by Berger — that local election offices be equipped to provide free identifications for those who don’t have driver’s licenses.

"Getting a free identification isn’t free if you have to travel or take time off work or get child care," Bondurant said.

Berger said the number of voters requesting the free identification in Georgia has been small.

"I would think that the security of our ballot box would be a bipartisan measure," Berger said, pointing to surveys that show picture identification requirements are popular with voters.

The issue is not completely partisan.

The federal voting reform commission led by former President Carter, a Democrat, and former Secretary of State James Baker III, a Republican, suggested a photo-identification requirement as part of its 87 recommendations last year.

The U.S. Senate flirted with adding a photo-identification requirement for voting to an immigration bill last week but stopped short.

Still, local voting officials say that requiring photo identification may not even prevent voter fraud.

"I think it would be fairly burdensome on the process and potentially a barrier to legitimate voters voting," said George Gilbert, Guilford County’s election director. He said that fraud is much more likely with mail-in absentee ballots than with people who walk in and vote.

Berger’s bill has been referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mbinker@news-record.com

This is the same thing as requiring extra security at airports post 9/11. Nobody opposed the annoyance of having to practically disrobe to get through security with picture identification required at every checkpoint.

The only people who would oppose this are those who fear for their jobs and want to leave the gate open for illegal immigrants and dead people to vote.

What happened to personal responsibilty, and accountability? If a person can't find their way to a polling place, or can't look in the phone book and find the board of elections, and ask for an absentee or previsional ballot, then I don't want that uninformed, dunder head voting.

Their the ones that vote straight ticket, regardless of what type of person is running for election.

I don't want it to be so easy that every breathing, brain dead person, illegal immigrant and names from tombstones that can be used, and bused to a poll will be able to vote.

We require ID for renting a video, for crying out loud. And it seems it's to much to ask that we do what we can to be sure that the vote is not corrupted, and we have as honest an election as possible? It's crazy to be against this bill!

Anyone that doesn't want some type of photo ID to verify who's voting, is someone, or party that is "wanting" the vote to be corrupted, and dishonest. Period!

I mean for pete sake, I read an article on ALIPAC about some Democrats that want illegals to be able to vote. ARGGGGGGG, that's insane!!!