VICKSBURG - When candidates tell you they support "voter ID," it might be a good idea to ask why.
Odds are, they'll respond with something along the lines of "to protect the integrity of elections."
That's a good answer, of course, and maybe it's impossible to get into details on the campaign trail, but candidates should at least be quizzed enough to determine whether they really think voter ID is a fix-all - because it's not.
At least 24 of the 50 states already have voter ID in various forms, some more strict than others. In those 24, believe it or not, there are still many problems with "the integrity of elections."
Mississippi, by the way, under the federal Help America Vote Act (which paid for most of the cost of those touch-screen machines we now use), already has one form of voter ID.
If you remember, a few years ago Congress deemed that people be allowed to pick up papers to enroll as voters, at least in federal elections, while obtaining driver's licenses, applying for food stamps and such. People could even enroll completely by mail.
HAVA came later. And it says all first-time voters everywhere who registered via the U.S. Postal Service and who have not provided identification papers to an elections official, must do so on their initial visit to an actual polling place.
Wonder how often that provision is enforced?
Wonder how many Mississippi poll workers have even been told it exists?
Here's the thing: The Norman Rockwell portrait of dedicated citizens fulfilling their patriotic duty by signing in and marking their votes on a paper ballot at the church or American Legion hall nearest their homes is not as accurate as it was. We have a bunch of detailed laws and some pretty sophisticated technology, but in ways large and small the processes of an election can be thwarted.
This is aided by the fact that so many are turned off by politics and oblivious to civic duties. (Hundreds of thousands of Mississippians are not registered voters.) And it is aided by the fact we are simply more casual these days, even about "official" matters.
In Mississippi, election days are social events in most communities.
Polling stations are staffed in almost all venues by the neighbors of the people doing the voting. Regular poll workers already know almost all, if not all, the people coming in to cast ballots.
It's plausible that a voter might say, "I need a favor. My mom had an appointment and got held up at the doctor's office, can I vote for her?" And it's equally plausible that a poll worker, wishing to be accommodating, will say, "Sure, just sign her name right here."
This is illegal on a lot of levels, but it's far from far-fetched.
The proponents of voter ID offer anecdotes, some from their own experiences, of seeing or hearing about whole pads of absentee ballots (which are still cast on paper) being taken from courthouses, of people escorting others into polling stations and being directly involved in "assisting" them in voting. There are stories of people driving from polling station to polling station, signing in under a different name at each.
In some of these, there is complicity or at least inattention by poll workers. In others, the people stage the fraud all by themselves. Requiring an ID might make some of the schemes a bit more challenging, but none would be halted.
As things stand, it appears Mississippi Democrats, under Judge Allen Pepper's June 8 ruling, will be casting on Tuesday their last primary ballots without an ID card anyway. That's because Democrats have "won" the power to close their primaries, and a party ID card is the mechanism by which parties do that in other states.
Republicans say they'll keep their primaries open, but if a reregistration is ordered by the Legislature, it may include an overall voter ID component for all elections.
Whatever comes to pass, however, will not form a barrier to intentional or even casual variances from law that pose a threat to "the integrity of elections."
Be for voter ID or be against it. Be wary, however, of any candidate who tells you it will work magic. It may be part of a solution, but it is not the solution.
