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Today in Vote Suppression

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“Soft” Voter-ID laws are anything but:

For those facing difficulty voting, the onus of proof, administrative glitches, and worker error make voter-ID softening devices nothing more than weak attempts to deal with the original harshness of voter-ID laws. Further, these laws suck up voting-rights groups’ resources, sometimes quite significantly, which they use to fight for individual rights. They are also expensive for states and local governments to administer. A proposed Missouri voter-ID law is estimated to cost $17 million in its first three years. Meanwhile, the process of getting an acceptable ID remains onerous for some voters. And each fight threatens to disenfranchise a voter who cannot put up with the administrative hassle or worse.

It is hard to quantify just how many people are deterred from voting because of strict voter-ID laws or how many of those would have been able to take advantage of a softening device or exemption. But that’s not the point. A focus on aggregate numbers puts the emphasis in the wrong place, away from individual voters’ rights and dignity and away from the naked partisan efforts to discourage those voters. What courts should be asking is: Why is it constitutional to put new roadblocks in front of voters without adequate justification?

Given that any evidence of such laws preventing impersonation fraud or instilling voter confidence is essentially nonexistent, courts should stop trying to soften voter-ID laws and start striking them outright. Not because they will or won’t affect election outcomes, but because protecting each eligible voter’s right to vote is what’s paramount—not whether or not they have hands to sign the correct documents.

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