Voter ID laws a matter of debate as experts argue their case at NPC Newsmaker

Voter identification laws' effects on turnout, and whether these laws disenfranchise voters, were the focus of a spirited debate among two election experts at a National Press Club Newsmakers news conference on Thursday, Oct. 16.

Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said voter ID laws discriminate by disenfranchising voters. At the opposite end, Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, argued that voter ID laws are common sense solutions that prevent fraud without suppressing voter turnout.

Ifill started by citing the case of United States v. Texas. Et al.; Veasey v. Perry, in which the judge concluded that requiring the photo IDs creates “substantial burden” of the right to vote, “has a discriminatory effect,'' and also "constitutes a poll tax.”

The judge’s findings should be used to “frame the conversation around voting, which I think in this country has become entirely upside down,” Ifill said. What is needed is “a robust conversation about how to ensure that every eligible voter in our country can participate fully in the electoral process,” she said.

Ifill cited the case of a woman who had to choose between eating or paying $42 so she could afford a new birth certificate and then get the necessary photo ID. No one should have to choose between voting and eating, Ifill said, making the point that 500,000 to 800,000 Texas voters will be disenfranchised if the voter ID law remains in effect.

When von Spakovsky spoke, he argued that voter ID laws are needed to prevent fraud. These laws have not suppressed turnout, he said, pointing out that after these voter ID laws were passed, there have been numerous elections with increased voter participation.

“My point is that we now have many years of data on states that have voter ID law in place,'' and the official data shows that ``the idea that it will suppress people’s right to vote is simply not true,” von Spakovsky said.

Responding to this argument, Ifill said political scientists state that turnout is affected by a variety of factors, and added that an increase in turnout does not refute that voter suppression could be occurring.

The discourse by Ifill and von Spakovsky still left two questions on the table. In spite of von Spakovsky's argument that increased turnout shows the vote is not being suppressed, it is indeterminate if turnout would have been even higher without these new voter ID laws. So it's an open question whether voters are being disenfranchised.

The second question is, how do we determine why citizens are not voting. Von Spakovsky said the U.S. Census Bureau, after elections, asks people whether they voted and if not, why not. It remains unclear if people could determine that the new voter ID laws prevented them from voting.