Last week, I posted here about voter ID requirements.  There was a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court on the same topic.  It seems Indiana was trying to require voters to present ID in order to vote.  Lawsuit.  In the end, the court found that the requirement wasn’t particularly onerous (the New York Times’s article is as good as any for a basic summary, or go straight to the ruling).

Unsurprisingly, there has been a lot of hang-wringing on this (see, for example, this New York Times unsigned editorial).  We can expect similar legislation elsewhere now that the Court has made it pretty difficult to challenge these sorts of laws (see, for example, the ongoing battle to pass this sort of legislation in Texas).

As I wrote last time, I’m not particularly opposed to voters being required to present ID.  However, ID needs to be easy to get for anybody who is elgible to vote.  For most people, this is easy.  The big question we’d all like to know is the size of the population for which it’s not easy.  Consider, as a hypothetical example, an elderly Texas woman who never drove a car.  If she’s over 75 years old, the state’s centralized birth certificate registry won’t (officially) have her records.  It could well require detective work to produce sufficient documentation to get her a state ID card.  Who’s going to pay for that?

The big technical question, of course, is whether the root desires behind the voter ID requirement can be addressed in some more effective fashion than ID requirement.  What are those root desires?

1. Prevent legitimate citizens from registering to vote and voting in more than one locale
2. Prevent registered voters from casting multiple votes in their own name
3. Prevent registered voters from impersonating other registered voters
4. Prevent anyone, including malicious poll workers, from casting votes on behalf of registered voters who have chosen not to vote
5. Prevent non-eligible people (non-citizens, felons, etc.) from registering to vote
6. Detect changes in registered voters’ eligibility status, quickly and accurately

Which problems can be solved by purple ink on a voter’s thumb?  #1 and #2 are readily solved, since a second attempt to vote will be forbidden.  #3 is disincentivized, because the impersonator will be unable to vote under his or her own name.  #4-6 will require other technologies.

Okay, which problems can be solved by having required voter ID?  Let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, we have a centralized state database keyed off the voter’s ID card number, but individual polling places do not have real-time access to this database.  Also, let’s assume that voter ID cards do not have any computational power: no smart cards, no crypto, etc.  #1 is ostensibly solved by the central database.  #2 cannot be prevented (at least, in a world with early voting or voting centers, where a voter has multiple places where he or she can legitimately vote), but it can be detected, and is thus disincentivized.  #3 is solved.  #4 is largely unsolved: if malicious poll workers want to forge signatures in the poll book, they may or may not be detected.  (In a recount situation, written signatures should be verified, but it’s unclear what the accuracy of that checking process might be.)

You could try to solve #4 with smartcards that issue digital signatures, but that’s a whole different can of worms.  Since the smartcard doesn’t really know what it’s being asked to sign, this could be exploited by an attacker.  (Example: you need to present your ID in a variety of different circumstances, such as proving your age to enter a bar.  The bouncer could “swipe” your card and use that as a way of getting a forged signature on an election record.)

What about #5 and #6?  These are really back-end database problems.  Requiring voters to present ID doesn’t have any impact.  However, having a database that is keyed off the voters’ ID cards significantly improves #5 and #6 and could ostensibly help reduce a variety of errors in the process.

Curiously, it seems that most of the benefit of requiring ID occurs in the back-end database, rather than on the day of the election.  The only real benefit of presenting ID, on election day, occurs in vote centers, early voting locations, and so forth.  When there may be millions of eligible voters who could use a vote center, traditional paper poll books are unworkable.  With a database keyed from ID card numbers, a voter’s records can be efficiently looked up and verified.  While this isn’t a security problem, improving the efficiency of the voting process is still a worthwhile goal.

Recently, HR 5036 was shot down in Congress.  That bill was to provide “emergency” money to help election administrators who wished to replace paperless voting systems with optically scanned paper ballots (or to add paper-printing attachments to existing electronic voting systems).  While the bill initially received strong bipartisan support, it was opposed at the last minute by the White House.  To the extent that I understand the political subtext of this, the Republicans wanted to attach a Voter ID requirement to the bill, and that gummed up the works.  (HR 5036 isn’t strictly dead, since it still has strong support, but it was originally fast tracked as a “non-controversial” bill, and it is now unlikely to gain the necessary 2/3 majority.)

I’ve been thinking for a while about this whole voter ID problem, and I have to say that I don’t really see a big problem with requiring that voters present ID so they can vote.  This kind of requirement is used in other countries like Mexico and it seems to work just fine.  The real issue is making sure that all people who might want to vote actually have IDs, which is a real problem for the apparently non-trivial number of current voters who lack normal ID cards (and, who we are led to believe, tend to vote in favor of Democrats).

The question then becomes how to get IDs for everybody.  One answer is to put election authorities in charge of issuing special voting ID cards.  This works in other countries, but nobody would ever support such a thing in the U.S. because it would be fantastically expensive and the last thing we need is yet another ID card.  The “obvious” solution is to use driver’s licenses or official state IDs (for non-drivers).  But, what if you’ve never had a driver’s license?

As an example, here are Texas’s list of requirements to get a driver’s license.  Notice how they also require you have proof of a social security number?  If you’ve somehow managed to make it through life without getting one, and I imagine many poor people could live without one, then that becomes a significant prerequisite for getting a driver’s license.  And it’s pretty difficult to get a SSN if you’re unemployed and don’t have a driver’s license (see the Social Security Administration’s rules).

One way or another, you’re going to need your birth certificate.  Here’s how you get a copy of one in Texas.  If you don’t have any other form of ID, it’s pretty difficult to get your birth certificate as well.  You’ll either need an immediate relative with an ID to request your birth certificate on your behalf, or you’ll need utility bills in your name.  And if you’re older than 75, the state agency may not be able to help you, and who knows if the county where you were born has kept its older records properly.

It’s easy to see that somebody in this situation is going to find it difficult to navigate the bureaucratic maze.  If the only benefit they get, at the end of the day, is being allowed to vote, it’s pretty hard to justify the time and expense ($25 for the birth certificate, the social security card is free, and $15 plus hours waiting in line for the state ID card).  For potential voters who don’t have a permanent home address, this process seems even less reasonable.

The only way I could imagine a voter ID requirement being workable (i.e., having a neutral effect on partisan elections) is if there was a serious amount of money budgeted to help people without IDs to get them.  That boils down to an army of social workers digging around for historical birth records and whatever else, and that’s not going to be cheap.  However, I’m perfectly willing to accept a mandatory voter ID, as long as enough money is there to get one, for free, for anybody who wants one.  The government is willing to give you a $40 coupon to receive digital signals for an analog TV, as part of next year’s phase-out of analog broadcasts.  Why not help out with getting identification papers as part of phasing in an ID requirement?

[Sidebar: if you’re really concerned about people voting multiple times, the most effective solution has nothing to do with voter ID.  The simple, low-tech answer is to mark voters’ fingers with indelible ink.  It wears off after a while, it’s widely used throughout the world, and there’s no mistaking it for anything else.  I can’t wait for the day when I tune into my nightly newscast and see the anchor giving grief to the sportscaster because his thumb isn’t painted purple.]