I did some looking into this yesterday and had considered the requirement for voting ID laws to be a no-brainer, given that we have voter ID requirements here in Canada (although Prime Minister Justin Castro looks like he wants to repeal those requirements).
Turns out things are more nuanced than I had hoped. A photo ID law on its own is useless unless:
1) The ID is only issued to people who can prove that they are US citizens in order to get said ID; and
2) The law is actually enforced at the polling place.
The seminal (indeed only) academic study on non-citizens participating in Federal Elections in the US was done in 2014 by Jesse T. Richman, Gulshan A. Chattha and David C. Earnest. It was peer-reviewed and entitled, "Do non-citizens vote in US elections?" Here's a link:
https://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content...-et-al.pdf
The study itself has been vehemently criticized by many, academics included. It's fair to say that much of the criticism was often on political lines, although not all. However, the authors themselves later admitted that reliance on self-reporting and a sample size in the many tens of thousands as opposed to hundreds of thousands could create statistical anomalies. That said, it is the ONLY peer-reviewed study of its kind (there should be more undertaken and undertaken soon) so it is what should be referenced at the moment.
The first thing to note from the study is that the pool of non-citizen and therefore potentially illegal voters is larger than one might think.
We've all seen during this most recent election speculation about how many undocumented, illegal immigrants there are in the United States. According to the last US Census, the number was around 11 million - that has some likely flaws in it because it relies on people to tell the truth about their illegal status. Estimates have ranges from 11 million to as high as 30 million, although it is literally impossible to know thanks to the culture of lawlessness that has arisen with respect to US immigration law (this is thanks to BOTH major parties). Certainly illegal aliens represent a large potential pool of illegal voters.
The often forgotten further potential pool is permanent residents. This pool is what the study assumes most of the self-reporting respondents were. They are individuals who are lawfully within the United States, but are not citizens (and may never be unless they qualify for and choose to naturalize). Current estimates of the amount of permanent residents in the US are around 15 million, about half of whom qualify for naturalization.
As can be seen, there is a potentially enormous pool of non-citizen voters. So the question is, how many of them voted illegally?
The conclusions of the study were that in the 2008 and 2010 US Federal elections, non-citizen voting was low, but it was also non-zero. The low range they came up with was around a few hundred thousand, the high range was close to 3 million (my view would be that it would probably be toward the lower range but that is simply an opinion).
In either case, there are indications of a significant issue. Non-citizens should NOT be voting in US Federal elections. It is illegal. Even if only a few thousand votes are cast illegally, the potential exists to affect critical district and electoral college races, something the authors of the study acknowledge.
The question becomes, if non-citizen voting is to remain illegal (and most here would probably agree it should), then what does the state do to prevent it? Voter ID seems to be the standard Republican answer, and was mine as well until I looked into the results of this study.
The authors are dubious about voter ID, in and of itself, as an effective bar:
Quote:Quote:
Our results also suggest that photo-identification requirements are unlikely to be effective at preventing electoral participation by non-citizen immigrants: In 2008, more than two thirds of non-citizen immigrants who indicated that they were asked to show photoidentification reported that they went on to cast a vote. A potential response to the inefficacy of photo-id at preventing non-citizen voting is found in laws recently passed by Kansas and Arizona that require voter registrants to prove citizenship. By highlighting and emphasizing the citizenship requirement (and by requiring documentation non-citizens should be unable to provide) it seems likely that such laws would prevent more non-citizens from voting. That said, enforcement would be critical for efficacy (and much would depend here upon local election officials), particularly since federal voter registration forms do not require proof of citizenship. In addition, already registered non-citizens might well be able to continue voting. In any case such measures would come with significant costs for some citizens for whom the necessary documentation could be challenging to provide.
This is a critical point.
Unless the ID can only be obtained by someone who proves they are a citizen first, and that law is also enforced, the law is useless.
Take the voter registration form in California, for example. A social security number as requested, but not mandatory and can be avoided on both the online and paper form by clicking/checking a box stating the registrant doesn't have one. That is ridiculous as it is the best guard against a non-citizen attempting to register.
A driver's license number is required. However, it is just the number and not a reproduction of the license itself (i.e. a picture or photocopy of it). California is a jurisdiction that issues driver's licenses to people who are unable to prove they are lawfully within the United States. Such a license has a proviso right on its face that states it cannot be used for ID for voter registration. However, since all the registration forms ask for is the number and not a reproduction of the license itself (which would be so easy to ask for in modern society), you can see my immediate concern. I could also find no indication that the State uses a special numbering for the unauthenticated licenses versus the authenticated ones. I also have concerns that in a true-blue Democrat State, where 22% of the current population was foreign born, the proper cross-checking would even be done by the civil servants.
This raises the other point from the study. No law will be effective unless it is actually enforced. The fact that Sanctuary Cities in the United States even exist is an indication of how seriously certain American local governments take Federal immigration laws.
A reform is going to be a lot more difficult (and likely expensive) and the usual Republican notions of requiring photo IDs. A National Voter ID that is only issued to people who can prove their citizenship is something that comes to mind, but that is going to be both expensive and time consuming (as well as raising certain constitutional issues).
That said, I believe it is something my Southern neighbours must engage in. The culture of lawlessness when it comes to immigration in the US must end. It's just that the solution might well be more time-consuming, expensive and complicated than the immediate answer that generally comes to mind.
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