Nevada should work to adopt Georgia's voter ID standard
In many states, voters can present utility bills, birth certificates and Social Security cards to poll workers to verify their identification and registration. But in more than half of the 50 states, Nevada among them, voters aren't required to present identification at the polls as long as they produced a valid ID when they registered.
Such standards leave the election process vulnerable to fraud. Anyone motivated to support a particular candidate or issue can easily vote at four or five different precincts under different names if they know they won't have to provide a form of identification.
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Georgia's Republican lawmakers believe the integrity of elections is more important than voter convenience. They want voters to produce photo identification at every election. So this week, they passed a bill to make Georgia the seventh state to require that voters show photo ID at the polls (Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, South Carolina and South Dakota are the others). On Thursday, Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue signed the bill into law.
Last year, Georgia lawmakers passed nearly identical legislation, but a federal judge blocked it, ruling a $35 fee for state identification amounted to an unconstitutional poll tax on citizens who did not already have a U.S. passport, state driver's license or military ID. The new law waives the fee and provides counties with the equipment needed to produce the ID cards.
The issue causes much squealing and stomping among Democrats, who insist that efforts to require photo identification at polling stations are intended to prevent the poor, the elderly and minorities from voting. But when photo identification is required for everything from check writing and credit card purchases to securing government aid and boarding an airplane, how is requiring someone to carry that identification on Election Day a hardship?
Democrats' true motivation in opposing such legislation lies in their desire to broaden the registration pool as much as possible to make it easier for noncitizens and criminals to cast ballots in favor of candidates on the left -- even if it could corrupt the count.
Georgia's bill is a common-sense reform that would bolster public confidence in the election process. Nevada election officials and lawmakers should consider pushing for similar standards here.
