Civitas President Explains Need for Voter Photo ID | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post, by Francis De Luca, was originally published in the Elections & Voting section of Civitas's online edition.

    With the General Assembly considering legislation requiring voters to show photo identification to vote, a House panel recently heard from experts on the issue. Among those testifying was Civitas President Francis X. De Luca. Here are his remarks with accompanying charts.
Remarks to House Committee on Elections, by Francis De Luca, State Legislative Building, Rm. 643 on March 13, 2013 at 1:00 PM
    Mr. Chairman and Members of the committee, on behalf of the Civitas Institute I would like to thank you for inviting me to testify.

    I am here today for three purposes: To discuss the need for a government-issued photo ID for voting; to share polling data on photo ID; and to talk about the facts surrounding Georgia's experience with government-issued photo ID and its relevance to the debate in North Carolina;

    Why require a government-issued photo ID to vote?

    Until recently North Carolina was primarily a rural state and our election system relied on small precincts with election officials who knew the precinct's voters. We are no longer rural - and we no longer vote in our home precincts. In the 2012 general election, over 2.5 million voters out of the 4.5 million voters used One-Stop Voting sites. These sites, in many cases, are staffed by temporary help - not local precinct election officials. Voters can use any site anywhere in the county and can register and vote at the same time. The days of poll workers knowing voters ended in 2000 with the start of One-Stop Voting. With Same-Day Registration starting in 2008, One-Stop poll workers did not even have a complete list of potential voters. One-Stop voting and Same Day Registration combined with the increased urbanization and mobility of the population have rendered obsolete the ability of poll workers to serve as an effective check on voter impersonation. We need to update our ballot access and ballot protection just as we have updated our ability to register to vote and to vote.

    This is just not a case of voting problems; it is also that the safeguards put in place to protect our voter rolls have been mostly stripped away. When the 1995 National Voter Registration Act, also known as Motor Voter, opened up the voter registration process, an important safeguard against fraudulent registrations - the requirement of a "verification" mailing to the voters residence address -- was put into place. This safeguard was rendered null when the State Board of Elections allowed verification mailings to be sent first to PO Boxes and then to out-of-state addresses.

    Another safeguard was in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which required new voters to submit either a drivers license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number to be a valid registration. The State Board no longer requires validation of Social Security numbers or drivers license numbers in order to vote. No effort to systematically clean up and correct voter rolls has been undertaken.

    Another complication in our election system is the different classes of voters with differing requirements as to proof of identity.

    If voters register by mail they must show some sort of ID the first time they vote. But if they register any other way (including voter registration drives) they do not.

    The deadline to register to vote in North Carolina is 25 days before the election, unless you don't, and then you may register during the 17 days of One-Stop Voting.

    Your address must be validated by a verification mailing, unless you vote first, then it doesn't have to be verified - it is counted! This contradiction in law is due mostly to allowing voters to register at the same time they vote during One-Stop Voting and because registration ends 25 days before an election - not before One-Stop Voting. There is not time to complete the required verification process.

    Some advocates for keeping our current system and not adopting a photo ID say our current practice of requiring voters to sign an authorization to vote sheet is sufficient security. This is a hollow suggestion, as poll workers do not have access to a signature to compare it to and state election officials have already said local election officials are not handwriting experts.

    In changing the law we have created inequities in how we treat voters depending on how and when they register to vote.

    It is time that North Carolina begins to treat all voters equally - requiring a government-issued photo ID of all voters prior to casting a vote will mean all voters are treated the same. It will also update our current election system to help protect the integrity of the process.

    Polling Data: (PPT) The committee has these slides and if anyone would like a copy just let me know.

    [Crosstabs and data available here]

Slide 2: Dates poll was conducted.
Slide 3: Despite claims of over a half million voters without ID, our polling consistently shows 2% or less of registered voters lack a government-issued photo ID.
Slide 4: 2/3 of registered voters in our last poll supported requiring a photo ID. Elon polls of all adults consistently show support exceeding 70% as do other public opinion polls.
Slide 5: North Carolina voters overwhelmingly support strict voting laws even if it means some voters have to cast a provisional ballot.
Slide 6: By a slim margin voters do not believe problems with ineligible voters or voter fraud would cause citizens to question an election result. But the overall result is a statistical tie.
Slide 7: A clear majority thinks having a photo ID requirement would stop voter fraud.
Slide 8: By a 3-1 margin voters who answered said requiring a photo ID would increase the likelihood of them voting.
Slide 9: A photo ID requirement will give voters more confidence in election results.