Debate intensifies over state election laws

WASHINGTON -- Four months away from a presidential election still considered a tossup, new battles are brewing over state election laws.

Opponents say the laws will depress voter turnout. Supporters say they're necessary to ensure fair elections.

In the most recent developments:

•A federal court in Washington began hearing arguments this week on whether a voter ID law in Texas discriminates against Hispanic voters.

•Michigan Republican Gov. Rick Snyder vetoed a bill last week that would have required voters to show identification before casting absentee ballots.

•The Justice Department rejected South Carolina's voter ID law for the second time, saying it could disproportionately affect black voters. The state sued earlier this year. A federal court has scheduled oral arguments for Sept. 24, just 43 days before the election.

•A judge ruled in June that Wisconsin's voter ID law violates the state constitution. An appeal is likely.

Attorney General Eric Holder is promising an aggressive effort to safeguard voting rights.

"The arc of American history has always moved toward expanding the electorate," Holder said Tuesday at the NAACP convention in Houston. "It is what has made this nation exceptional. We will simply not allow this era to be the beginning of the reversal of that historic progress."

The Obama administration and national civil rights groups say state laws that require people to show government-issued photo IDs at the polls could deny millions of them — mostly minorities and the elderly, who are more likely to lack such IDs — the right to vote.

Supporters of the laws, mostly Republicans, counter that they ensure fair elections by preventing voter impersonation. They dismiss claims the laws will depress voter turnout.

"All you've got to do is look at the actual turnout in states like Georgia and Indiana, which have now had their ID laws for five years," said Hans von Spakovsky, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a top election-law official at the Justice Department under President George W. Bush.

A few years from now, "everybody will look back at the huge fuss about this and go, 'Why was everybody upset?'" said von Spakovsky, who also worked at the Federal Election Commission. "Because the laws would've been in place, people won't have had any problems (and) we won't have affected the elections."

Some election experts say there's little evidence to support either side's claims.

"Everybody wants to find out just how often voter impersonation really happens and everybody wants to quantify how many voters truly lack ID and do they really, truly vote Democratic more often than Republican," said Jennifer Bowser, an election-law analyst for the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures. "That evidence is the Holy Grail in the world of elections this year."

Thirty states have voter ID laws, some of which date back more than a decade, according to the NCSL.

Of those, 11 states — including the crucial swing states of Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania — require voters to show some form of ID. Five of the 11 states — Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Tennessee — require government-issued photo identification, according to the NCSL.

Three states that recently tightened existing voter ID laws to require photo identification — Alabama, South Carolina and Texas — have a history of electoral discrimination against minorities and must obtain approval from the Justice Department or federal courts before the changes can take effect.

Florida is at the heart at the debate, 12 years after the state handed the presidency to Republican George W. Bush amid well-documented voting snafus.

Voters in Florida must show a photo ID such as a driver's license or a non-photo ID such as a signed credit card. People without an ID can cast a provisional ballot but they won't be counted unless the signatures on the ballot match the signatures on voter registration cards, according to the NCSL.

Last year, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill reducing the time period for early voting from 14 days to eight days and making it more difficult for third-party groups to register voters.

Scott also proposed to purge as many as 182,000 names from voting rolls statewide because they did not match driver's license data, a move that ignited a political firestorm and prompted the Justice Department to sue. Most local election supervisors suspended the purge after a sample list showed it to be unreliable.

Since President Obama was elected, there has been a spike in interest in voter ID laws.

Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island and Wisconsin passed new laws last year. Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas tightened their existing laws to require a photo ID. Governors in Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire and North Carolina vetoed strict new photo ID laws last year, according to the NCSL.

Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, called the wave of new election laws the "most systematic, aggressive organized assault on voting rights in a very, very long time."

"This could make 2000 look like a picnic," said Morial, which has made the fight against election changes in Florida and other states a priority.

Groups on each side expect states to consider additional election laws, including ones requiring people to prove they're citizens when they register to vote.

"They're not going to let up," said Nancy Abudu of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, which has challenged laws in Florida, South Carolina and Wisconsin. "Photo ID is coming to a state near you."

Von Spakovsky at the Heritage Foundation said he advises states to pass voter ID laws and take other steps, such as requiring people to prove their citizenship. Such steps ensure the integrity of elections, he said.

"In the end, I don't care who wins the elections," von Spakovsky said. "I just want to be sure that we have a fair election without any cheating."

Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama has criticized Holder for challenging state election laws. He reiterated GOP claims that voter fraud exists and it's up to states, cities and counties to ensure elections are fair.

"Civil rights requires that people be able to vote, but only vote once if they are lawfully entitled to vote," Sessions, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Holder at a hearing in June. "I am just disturbed really about the approach you have taken."

Meanwhile, civil rights and voting rights groups have launched campaigns to make sure voters know their states' requirements when they cast a ballot. The groups are hosting workshops and rallies and providing online links to state election agencies.

"We're trying to make sure our community is armed with the information they need," said Melanie Campbell, president of the nonpartisan National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.

She said it's important to make sure voters, no matter their politics, have access to the polls.

"There's a lot riding on this that's not about the presidential election," she said.