03 Aug 2012 New National Center Voter ID Report Receives Fox News Channel Coverage

Fox News Channel host Steve Doocy reported on the National Center’s newest policy paper about the need for voter ID protections yesterday on “Fox and Friends.”

The paper, “Victims of Voter Fraud: Poor and Disadvantaged are Most Likely to Have Their Vote Stolen,” by National Center adjunct fellow and Project 21 member Horace Cooper looks at examples of voter identity fraud in half-a-dozen states.  In particular, Horace looks at how these instances of criminal behavior affected poor and minority voters.  He notes that voter ID laws would actually help these disadvantaged constituencies participate in a free and fair electoral process — the direct opposite of the claims that are being made by opponents of polling place protections.

Horace notes in the paper:

[V]oter-fraud plots prey upon the weakest members of our society. They violate the public trust, they erode faith and confidence in our democratic process, and they ultimately disenfranchise those men and women whose votes should be rightfully counted.

Yet liberals and the Obama Administration turn a blind eye to these travesties. They oppose common-sense solutions and efforts like state voter ID laws and more stringent voter registration requirements specifically designed to discourage voter fraud.

While ballot protection critics liken simple safeguards such as showing a photo ID before voting to Jim Crow-era barriers to participation in the electoral process, Horace points out that the modern tactics of voter disfranchisement is much harder to spot than it used to be:

Today’s schemes often target the same black voters once deprived under Jim Crow.  As former Democratic congressman-turned Republican Artur Davis has acknowledged, voter fraud is rampant in African-American districts such as his former district in Alabama, and the schemes are less obvious and even more clever because voters often don’t realize that their vote has been negated.  In cases of “absentee ballot harvesting” and “ghost voters,” citizens may become aware that they’ve been defrauded either after showing up at the poll and being turned away, or worse, only after the election is over.  In both instances, lawful citizens’ rights to select the policies or representatives of their own choosing are stolen by the fraudsters.  Similarly, non-citizen and felon-voting schemes counteract the intentions of the lawful voter by voting for policies and representatives contrary to the real desires and interests of the legal voter.  Counterfeiters print phony money and devalue a hard-earned currency.  Election fraudsters print phony votes and devalue the democratic voice of the disenfranchised voters.