A state election task force made progress this year, but it was disappointing that voter identification wasn't discussed, said Greenwood attorney Webb Franklin.
Franklin, a Republican who served four years in Congress starting in 1983, was appointed to the task force by Secretary of State Eric Clark. The group included Clark and 24 other members.
Franklin has experience in dealing with election law. As an assistant district attorney, he prosecuted voter fraud cases, and as a circuit judge, he tried election contests. He has served on committees on ballot security and voter fraud in local races.
Last year, he was summoned to Florida to observe the recount in the presidential election and help guard the ballots.
For Clark's task force, Franklin served as chairman of the Voter Roll Technology Working Group. Franklin said he wanted them to take up the issue of voter ID, but it was handed to another group. That group's chair, Constance Slaughter-Harvey, determined that the issue of voter ID was "not part of our charge," and it was decided by a 3-2 vote that her group wouldn't consider it.
Franklin said that Clark knew this would happen and that the secretary of state displayed a "bury-your-head-in-the-sand attitude" about voter ID.
"Eric Clark knew it would never get out of the subgroup based on the way it was configured," Franklin said, guessing that the issue must have been "too hot a political potato for him to fool with."
Franklin said he believes each voter should have to present identification when registering and again when voting, to establish his or her identity, age and address. He said he has heard the argument that an ID requirement would intimidate poor people and minorities and keep them away from the polls, as poll taxes and literacy tests once did. However, they shouldn't be intimidated by a requirement that would be imposed on everyone, he said.
He also was one of eight task force members to sign their support to a minority report on voter ID offered by Gregg Harper of Pearl. Harper wrote that not requiring voter ID would "weaken the confidence of the public in the electoral process" and cited the support shown for it by the National Commission of Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Harper argued that, if applied uniformly, voter ID would not intimidate voters, disenfranchise anyone or cause long lines at the polls.
Some states send ID cards through the mail and require them for admission to the polls. Franklin said he isn't advocating that for Mississippi because it would be more strict and more costly than necessary. Proving identity and residence - using, for example, a utility bill - and establishing age should be enough, he said.
Mississippi doesn't have as much of a problem with identification as border states do, Franklin said. Those states must take care that people who enter from other countries and register to vote through "motor voter" law are not allowed to vote if they are not U.S. citizens.
Voter ID eliminates this problem, he said.
On the issue of voter rolls, Franklin's group recommended a centralized system for all 82 counties. It would ensure that people don't vote in one county while still being registered in another one, because their names would be flagged in a state database.
Franklin said there was nearly unanimous agreement about the need for fairness in this area but that some disagreed on how to achieve it. The rolls are important not only for elections, but also for drawing jury pools.
In meetings on this subject, some circuit clerks and election commissioners expressed the fear that they would have less control over the inputting of information under such a system. However, Franklin said, this concern was unwarranted, because only the counties would be able to adjust the records.
An important question will be who will pay for the changes, and the federal government might be able to help, he said.
Franklin said he would like to see the state pass reforms such as voter ID and centralized rolls before federal election reform legislation is adopted. He said all the federal proposals he has seen would require states to make changes such as purging rolls or centralizing registration if they are to receive federal money for system improvements.
"Any of it that passes, in my opinion, has got to have a carrot and stick," he said.
Franklin said there could be some difficulty putting the counties' data together into a central database, because the counties might have them entered in different formats. For example, some counties record names with the last names first, and others put the first names first. Also, some are entered by computer and others by hand.
Keeping track of college students is a challenge as well, Franklin said. Many of these students are urged to register and vote a certain way in an election when they already are registered in their home districts. They are allowed to vote in the jurisdiction where they attend school, but not if they are registered at home.
On the issue of voting machines, Franklin said he has seen the scanner models used by some other counties and considers them state-of-the-art. However, the lever machines used in Leflore County do work and record numbers correctly, so they shouldn't be replaced just for the sake of replacing them, he said.
