Title: Why Voter ID Laws Aren’t Really about Fraud | FRONTLINE | PBS | Official Site
Headings: Why Voter ID Laws Aren’t Really about Fraud
Why Voter ID Laws Aren’t Really about Fraud
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Sarah Childress, Series Senior Editor, FRONTLINE
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Content: An analysis by News21, a journalism project at Arizona State University, found 28 cases of voter fraud convictions since 2000. Of those, 14 percent involved absentee ballot fraud. Voter impersonation, the form of fraud that voter ID laws are designed to prevent, made up only 3.6 percent of those cases. ( Other types included double voting, the most common form, at 25 percent, and felons voting when they were prohibited from doing so. But neither of those would be prevented by voter ID laws, either.) Mark Obenshain, a Republican Virginia state senator who was the primary sponsor of his state’s voter ID law, said that lawmakers tried to balance improving security with maintaining access to the ballot for elderly and disabled people. “There are good arguments that there are gaps with absentee ballots,” he said. “ But the issue is, how can we close that gap without unduly burdening the right to vote?” Obenshain said that these voters might not have access to a scanner or Xerox machine to make a copy of their ID. And, because absentee ballots must be sent to a voter’s registered address, they are still relatively secure, Obenshain said. “