| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Let's talk voter-identification laws.
Republicans have been passing them. Most Democrats seek to ban them. Senator Joe Manchin, however, included a version of voter ID in a voting-rights compromise bill that numerous high-profile Democrats, including Barack Obama and Stacey Abrams, have endorsed. Republicans have therefore accused Democrats of hypocrisy for first claiming that these laws were bigoted attempts to keep Black voters from the polls but then accepting them in exchange for other provisions, such as districting reform.
It's true that some Democrats, over the years, have made over-the-top claims about the effects of these laws — and about those who support them. That said, I don't see anything wrong with the party supporting a compromise that is consistent with the facts and with reasonable priorities.
For the facts, let's go to a letter from more than 1,000 political scientists supporting the voting-rights bill that was blocked by Republican filibuster this week in the Senate: As political scientists, we understand the importance of legislative compromise. However, there are no studies that find voter ID laws have any positive effect on turnout or prevent fraud. As a policy, it finds no support in the literature. In a democracy, the exacting burden of proof should be on those who seek to burden or restrict the franchise. And this is a burden that proponents of voter ID laws simply cannot meet.
Voter ID doesn't prevent fraud for a very simple reason: In-person voter impersonation is essentially impossible to do in an organized, collective way — that is, in a way that will produce more than a handful of votes — without the cooperation of corrupt election officials. And voter ID won't stop that kind of scheme anyway.
Faced with that argument, voter-ID proponents make a number of claims, none of them convincing. They'll say that other countries have similar requirements, which is true — except those nations issue national identification cards to all citizens, something civil libertarians in the U.S. have successfully opposed. They'll point to other instances where photo IDs are required, but either those examples turn out to make exceptions, or they're for activities that not all citizens participate in, such as flying on a commercial airliner.
Proponents will then typically say that it's not much trouble to get an ID, and they might point out — accurately — that studies have found only minimal turnout effects from these laws. But the political scientists are correct: Making it harder for anyone to vote should require very strong reasons, especially when it's clear that the extra burden falls along ethnic lines or on the poor. It's true that Black voters, for example, are less likely to have driver's licenses. Therefore, even if it turns out that those voters are able to overcome such restrictions, as a group they're making a greater effort to cast a ballot. That's not acceptable, especially since the claimed reasons for the provisions are unconvincing.
So what about the Manchin compromise?
To begin with, the details matter. What Manchin is advocating is a mild form of restriction, and one that would impose lighter burdens. Most opponents of Republican voter-ID laws have never said that no identification requirements at all should ever be imposed; they usually just say that no such law should make it harder for any group to comply. And at any rate, there's nothing wrong with strongly denouncing a provision but then accepting it as part of a compromise, so long as the overall deal beats no deal at all. As important as voting is, the ability to compromise — to accept what once seemed unacceptable because doing so is the only way to engage in collective self-government — is perhaps even more crucial.
None of which necessarily means that the Manchin compromise is the best choice. That depends on what's actually available, and what trade-offs are involved. But there's nothing wrong with reluctantly accepting that provision if it's part of the best available deal. And as far as voter ID is concerned, the problem remains that Republicans are insisting on a policy that makes it harder to vote, and that burdens some groups unequally, without any real benefit.
1. Excellent item from Seth Masket on Joe Biden's 2020 nomination and how parties operate.
2. Daniel Schuman on how Congress may fund itself next year.
3. Greg Sargent on congressional Democrats trying to rein in presidents.
4. Nate Cohn on the next steps on voting rights.
5. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Allison Schrager on millennials and wealth.
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