"Voter ID laws disenfranchise voters" - does this include dead voters and people who vote multiple times?

Most of the complaints come from people who never vote, anyway! I say we do what they do in other countries and require big blue fingerprints! That'll teach 'em. Big babies! Bah, humbug!!!

the 5 fasist take away the right of the homeless/poor to vote but let the military industral complex steal electronic votes with no problem [diebold]

It's rare that the life of the law dovetails with the life of the nation, although today the Supreme Court looks at a vitally important voting-rights case just as we're all obsessing over the presidential primaries. But this is not the Rehnquist Court, my friends, so the first order of business today is for the justices to distance themselves from the partisan constitutional atrocity that was Bush v. Gore—without, however, expanding voting rights in any way. Thus the Roberts Court sticks to doing what it does best: figuring out subtle ways to close the courthouse doors while appearing to be merely sweeping a little doctrinal dust from the court's front steps.

The real problem with Crawford v. Marion County Election Board is that the whole case is a dance of the seven veils. By which I mean that voter-identification laws are phony ways to solve pretend problems, while today's challenge to those laws is thin on evidence of real voters who've suffered real harms. A chimera doing battle with a fantasy. Oh, goody.

Slate V is a new online video magazine.http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid9880...

When Indiana adopted its voter-ID law in 2005—requiring voters to present a government-issued photo ID before casting a ballot—the state purported to be beating back the malodorous tide of vote fraud that was ostensibly sweeping the nation. But as professor Richard Hasen has ably demonstrated here in Slate, this vote-fraud epidemic is largely fictional. The major bipartisan draft fraud report (PDF) on the subject concluded there's very little polling-place fraud in America. So, increasingly, the effort to stop fictional vote fraud looks like a partisan effort to suppress votes that tend to go to Democrats—and somehow, it's always indigent, elderly, and minority voters who are disproportionately affected. A Republican-controlled legislature passed Indiana's law on a party-line vote, and then a Republican governor signed it, and every judge to cast eyes upon it thereafter seemed to be for or against it based on his or her own political affiliation.

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Nobody with any sense is worried about the dead voters because the Secretaries of State are all required, by law, to purge people from the roles upon issuance of a Death Certificate (often also part of the Secretary of State's office).

People voting multiple times tends to be a problem, but that has nothing to do with voter ID laws. It usually has to do with people who vote absentee in one state, based on owning a summer home, lake house, condo in a ski community or hunting cabin, and voting in person in their true home state where they have a permanent residence.

Do you have any idea what the political affiliation is of most people who own a summer home, lake house, condo in a ski community or hunting cabin and can actually get away with voting multiple times?

To David V: If what you say is true, then why hasn't the U.S. Attorney's office, with the millions of dollars that the Bush Administration dedicated to prosecuting just such cases (ignoring real crimes, and firing U.S. Attorneys who wouldn't fall in line with the administration's priorities) been able to successfully prosecute even ONE provable case? Answer - the allegations of widespread voter fraud have proved to be nothing more than a myth wherever and whenever they've been investigated.

No it doesn't well not valid "legal voters" anyway.

A state ID is only $10 save a dollar a week most people can do that, go to your local DMV & get an ID. It's easy simple & cheep for legal US citezens, but it does make it hard now for "illegal or non Us citizens to vote. & the Dem's were depending alot on those.

we need voter id's with pictures... I lived in NJ were the democrates brought voter fraud to a new level. The recently dead, multiple registrations in different districts, illegal aliens, voted. Ask Richrd Nixon in CookCty Chicago, in 1960

Sorry to direct this to someone answering but just have to correct this. To Bill above me. Here in so cal illegal aliens were found voting 2 or 3 times with different names and it had nothing to do with vacation homes.

Source: Loretta Sanchez its how she got into office. after her husband was caught tearing down the opponents campaign signs the night before the election.

I live in Florida, and everyone knows we don't know how to vote to begin with.

I can't even imagine how many dead people would be voting if no ID was required.

Only the invisible Democrats the were going to show up to vote (deceased, illegal, felons, pets, repeat voters,etc...)

Guess the Demoncrates will have to find some other way to steal votes!

YES, it would "disenfranchise" fraudulent Democrat voters.