Here's an interesting story about a Hudson resident and Ohio University student who mistakenly voted twice in this year's primary election, and ended up pleading guilty to a fifth-degree felony, election falsification. Did new Voter I.D. laws save the day? Not exactly.
As the story explains:
[The student], who voted in Summit County via absentee ballot and in Athens County via provisional ballot, said voting twice was an accident.
"I registered to vote absentee in Hudson because I wanted to vote for local issues, but I made a mistake, checking non-partisan, so I wasn't given an opportunity to vote for a presidential candidate in the election," she said in a phone call July 17.
Kleinert said she thought her absentee ballot was void because she didn't vote for a presidential candidate and voted on election day in the Athens election.
"I voted in Hudson on a local issue and voted on a presidential candidate in Athens," Kleinert said.
Voter I.D. requirements don't apply in the case of absentee ballots, for obvious reasons — you mail your request to the board of elections and receive the ballot at your registered address. Plus, voter I.D. requirements did not appear to affect the student's vote in Athens County, as she voted as herself, not some different voter. It seems the student was "caught," by the Athens County election board, which compared primary voters with the Summit County election board and found the double vote. Voter I.D. requirements go to the issue of voter impersonation, which is when one person attempts to vote with another person's ballot at the polling place. Voter impersonation appears not to be a very common type of voter fraud at all. As Indiana University Professor Eric Rasmusen wrote last year:
Why pay people to vote twice at the polling place when you can pay them to give you their absentee ballot to mail in? In fact, why pay people at all, when you can invent nonexistent people and mail in ballots for them?
An interesting question. Should we not have at least as much protection against voter fraud through absentee ballot fraud as we have against polling-place voter impersonation? I would think that a really good state-wide database of properly registered voters would be the place to start. With the proper database in place at each polling location, when someone attempts to pick up a provisional ballot, having already voted absentee, she could be reminded instantly of that earlier vote — before mistakenly taking a provisional ballot and committing a felony.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Voter ID, as I'm sure you realize, is a political tactic in search of a non-existing problem. Voter fraud laws requiring photo ID are specifically designed to suppress Democratic votes. Minorities and the poor make up the majority of folks who don't have drivers licenses.
Today's Republican interest in voter ID laws, (to stop something that is not happening), is part and parcel of the GOP's larger voter suppression policy….as witnessed in Florida in 2000 and attempted in Ohio in 2004.
I went to OU and have at least three friends who voted absentee for their home cities (they were out-of-state students and also in Athens. I'm not saying this is an Athens/OU problem, but I bet it happens with some frequency in college towns where people are voting often for the first time and are coming from places near and far.
A driver's license is not required to vote. The Summit County BOE website, http://www.summitcountyboe.com/ , notes that a utility bill is accepted and that a provisional ballot will be issued for anyone who does not have any form of ID, including a SSN, if they swear to their identity.
Like I said…..voter ID is a GOP inspired law in search of Democratic voter violations.
It matters not what FORM of ID is allowed or required. It's the law itself, in search of the invisible crime…..that is so egregiously politically motivated.
Rev: disappointed in your opinions and attitude. You might wanna ck out all the democratic fraud committed in the city of Detroit ….. even the democratic voters got sick of it and tossed Jackie Curry out because she was sending out pre marked (for her) absentee ballets . Get off your high horse and realize without real competition between reasonable qualified canidates/parties and realistic fraud prevention programs problems will and do occur. I need an id to get a library card – why shouldn't I need id to do something as important as vote
No question elections are important, but so is allowing all eligible people a chance to vote. A small inconvenience for you might be a large, even prohibitive, inconvenience for an elderly person who doesn't drive and has no driver's license, and who has lost or never had her original birth certificate. (To be fair, Ohio's ID requirements are much less onerous than those of some other states.) It's a question of balance, and there is little evidence that most election fraud is prevented by ID requirements. (A far greater problem is presented by absentee ballots, potentially.)