By Carten Cordell | Virginia Statehouse News
ALEXANDRIA — With their newfound majority, Virginia Republicans want to resurrect a proposal that would tighten voter-identification requirements. The measure failed to clear the state Senate last year.
The bill, which cleared committee and advanced to the House of Delegates on Friday, would require voters to present Virginia-issued photo ID at the polls or risk their votes being counted as provisional ballots.
The bill’s sponsor, Delegate Mark Cole, R-Fredericksburg, said the plan would help prevent voter fraud.
“Under current law, somebody can just go in without an ID and say, ‘I’m Mark Cole, and I want to vote.’ They sign an affidavit that they’re Mark Cole, and they are allowed to vote,” he said. “Then I come in later, and I am really Mark Cole and show my ID … I have to cast a provisional ballot, because it says I already voted.”
Under the current system, potential voters must present a photo ID, Social Security card or voter ID card. If they do not have any of these forms of identification, they can vote after signing an Affirmation of Identity under oath.
The new bill would move those votes to a provisional ballot, which would not be counted until the day after the election.
Democrats have argued the bill would alienate elderly and poor voters who have no ID, but an additional concern is for young voters and new residents heading to the polls for the first time.
House Minority leader David Toscano, D-Charlottesville, said the bill would drive away potential voters.
“If they have forgotten their ID or, in some cases, they don’t have one, then you would have to come back a second day, and it would be a huge problem for many people,” said Toscano.
Virginia requires proof of legal residency and proof of state residency for people without a driver’s license. Residents younger than 19 need to present one document or form to prove identity; people born before 1937 do not have to provide proof of residency if they have a driver’s license.
A similar proposal failed to make it through the Democratic Senate in 2011. Republican gains in the upper chamber this year could push through the reforms and reduce turnout among younger voters in the 2012 election.
“In 2008, there was huge voter turnout among temporary residents in Virginia,” said Craig Brians, a Virginia Tech political science professor who has studied the effects of voter turnout. “Now, registrars of voters around the state are willing to register students … who live in their dorm rooms. Having to produce a Virginia ID could potentially be a problem, because many of these students don’t have a Virginia driver’s license.”
The provision won’t deter voters, Cole said.
“It shouldn’t affect anybody,” he said. “As long as you are legally registered to vote, whether you have an ID or not, your vote will be counted. It is just a question of whether it will be cast on the regular machines or on the provisional ballot.”
But Brians said the provisional ballot has more of a psychological effect than a legal one.
“A lot of people would consider voting by provisional ballot to not be voting,” Brians said. “What they tell you right there when you get a provisional ballot is this will only be counted if the election is close, so it feels like you didn’t vote.”
Nearly 290,000 students are enrolled in Virginia’s public and private institutions, not counting community colleges.
Brittany Sarbone, a George Mason University graduate student from New Jersey, considered voting in Virginia in 2012.
But “if that law was (passed), I would probably just stay with voting in New Jersey,” she said. “It would be simpler. If I wanted to vote in Virginia, I might be less inclined to do, so if I had to go through all these hoops to do it.”
Samantha Downing, a 2010 graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, said the ID requirements would not keep her from voting.
“It would take a lot more than that to keep me from going to the polls,” she said. “I can’t really see it affecting voter turnout in general, either. … Most people carry their photo IDs with them, and you have to show your voter ID anyway, so it doesn’t seem like it is that much more to do to show your driver’s license.”
Charlottesville Deputy Registrar Diane Gilliland said plenty of wiggle room remains in Virginia election policy, even if the proposal passes.
“No photo ID is required to get a voter card, and the Social Security card has even less identifying information; you can still use both of those things, so (the proposal’s) intent is weakened by that,” she said.
The proposal could complicate the counting process in close races. Brians said the time and cost associated with counting those ballots could overload the precincts, which would have to hire workers to compare the signatures on registration forms with the signatures on ballots.
“It also takes a lot of extra time to cast a provisional ballot,” he said. “It takes extra personnel to deal with that. In a lot of places, it might just come up one or two times a day. But if this were to go into effect with students around, it could involve hundreds of students at particular precincts, which would be very complicated to deal with.”
The bill passed the state House Committee on Privileges and Election last week, 16-6, and it now moves to the House. But the fight may have just begun, as Democrats plan to protest the proposal Wednesday.
