Don't belive that BS about the minority voter being kept from voting by ID requirements

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Without Proof: The Unpersuasive Case Against Voter Identification

By Hans von Spakovsky and Alex Ingram
August 24, 2011

Abstract: Citizens Without Proof, a report on voter identification requirements produced by the Brennan Center at New York University’s School of Law, is both dubious in its methodology and results and suspect in its sweeping conclusions. By eschewing many of the traditional scientific methods of data collection and analysis, the authors of the Brennan Center study appear to have pursued results that advance a particular political agenda rather than the truth about voter identification. Given that Citizens Without Proof is the study most frequently cited by opponents of voter identification requirements, its shortcomings cannot simply be dismissed—a tempting solution, given the study’s dubious methodology. Rather, the conclusions drawn by the Brennan Center must be contrasted with other, legitimate studies—a process that will reveal the truth about voter identification requirements.

The primary argument against voter identification requirements—that many Americans lack proper identification and would therefore be prevented from voting—is not supported by credible studies of voter turnout rates. In fact, the study most frequently cited by opponents of voter identification requirements—Citizens Without Proof, a report produced by the Brennan Center at New York University’s School of Law[1]—is both dubious in its methodology and results and suspect in its sweeping conclusions.

Questionable Data Collection

The Brennan Center study suffers from sloppy—or perhaps purposefully misrepresented—data collection and biased questions. Based entirely on one survey of only 987 “voting age American citizens,” the report contains no information on how the survey determined whether a respondent was actually an American citizen. The survey could have included illegal and legal aliens, two categories of individuals that are not allowed to vote.

The survey then uses the responses of these 987 individuals to estimate the number of Americans without valid documentation based on the 2000 Census calculations of citizen voting-age population. The Census figures, however, contain millions of U.S. residents who are ineligible to vote, thus contributing to the study’s overestimation of voters without a government-issued identification.

By neglecting to ask whether respondents were actual or likely voters, registered voters, or even eligible to vote at all, the study ignores the most relevant data on this issue: the numbers of eligible citizens who would have voted but could not because of voter identification laws. All pollsters know that the only accurate surveys of how candidates are going to perform in an election are polls of likely voters, not the voting-age population. The Census counts many individuals in the voting-age population who are ineligible to vote, such as felons or permanent residents who are not U.S. citizens.

Election turnout data also reveal that significant numbers of Americans who may be eligible still do not vote for various personal reasons that have nothing to do with registration or voting rules and regulations. In fact, the largest group of nonvoters “are more affluent, better educated, and more involved in their communities or volunteer groups” than voters. They are just not interested in voting.[3]

Conducting a survey of registered or actual voters is so commonplace that the Brennan Center’s failure to do so raises suspicions regarding the veracity of the study’s conclusions.

{Article edited for brevity}

Conclusion

In the end, the Brennan Center report is clear in its intentions, fuzzy in its methodology, and wrong in its conclusions. Such doomsday predictions of widespread disfranchisement are increasingly being exposed as untrue as more legitimate research is performed and reported.

Claims that millions of would-be voters will be turned away on Election Day because of voter ID laws have been disproved in research, in the courtroom, and at the polling place. Studies like Citizens Without Proof are the last, desperate fits of a misguided resistance to the spread of common-sense voter ID reform.

We've ALL witnessed voter intimidation and heard all the horror stories of lost votes, stolen IDs, improper computer vote count, unusual voting machine results, absentee ballet destruction, dead people registered to vote, etc.

VOTER ID must be made law. Voter fraud is rampant and it's NOT the Conservatives who benefit from cheating. Anything we can do to improve to bring the truth to voting is in our best interest.