There's only three days left in the 2008 legislative session. Proponents of Voter Photo ID could float their amendment on any of those days, depending on whether or not the Senate or the House calls an elections bill.
In the Connecticut General Assembly as opposed to Congress, for those following from out-of-state, in order for an amendment to be called and debated, it must be germane to the underlying bill. There are a few elections bill left on the calendar, but who knows when, let alone if, they might be called. All the more reason to keep the e-mails coming.
I did a little research on the whole subject of voter fraud in Connecticut. It exists, but it is apparent that Voter Photo ID would do little to prevent it from occurring.
The top form of voter fraud in the past 15 years in Connecticut has been absentee ballot fraud. From 86 complaints, a total of 68 were found to be in violation of voting laws and many of those were forwarded to the Connecticut State's Attorney's office for prosecution. Voter Photo ID would not have prevented any of those violations.
There have been 10 cases since 1993 of actual voter fraud at the polls. However, nearly all of those cases involved people who were not "bona fide" residents of the districts they voted in. In other words, they registered to vote in a town they didn't live in, voted and they were subsequently caught. Ten people in 15 years, is that worth disenfranchising 500,000 voters?
The bigger question, though, is would a Voter Photo ID prevented those violations from occurring? Probably not.
When a person registers to vote in Connecticut, a postcard is sent to the voter to confirm their mailing address. If the postcard is delivered, you are officially a registered voter. If it is returned as non-deliverable, you're flagged. That's the voter confirmation process. To get a driver's license in Connecticut, you have to provide two forms of identification: a primary document (such as a birth certificate) and a postmarked piece of mail... any kind of mail. If you have used a fake address to register to vote, you can use that same address to get a driver's license.
If proponents for Voter Photo ID were truly serious about cracking down on nonresidents voting or voters casting ballots from the grave, they would support beefing up Connecticut's Centralized Voter Database and require municipalities to use it. The database could periodically crosscheck vital information with other state databases. That would a lot of problems.
One problem it couldn't solve, however, is the greatest source of election law violations: Election officials. From 1993 to 2007, 73 cases of election law violations were committed by election officials such as registrars, town clerks and poll workers. The violations ranged from absentee ballot fraud to denying people the right to vote.
Funny, proponents for Voter Photo ID haven't come up with a solution to that problem.
