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Conservatively Speaking
State Senator Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) represents parts of four counties: Milwaukee, Waukesha, Racine, and Walworth. Her Senate District 28 includes New Berlin, Franklin, Greendale, Hales Corners, Muskego, Waterford, Big Bend and parts of Greenfield, East Troy, and Mukwonago. Senator Lazich has been in the Legislature for more than a decade. She considers herself a tireless crusader for lower taxes, reduced spending and smaller government.
How can anyone object to asking for ID?
By Mary Lazich
Saturday, Jan 12 2008, 05:07 PM
After the Legislative Audit Bureau released an audit last November that recommended, “the Elections Board and, after it is replaced, the Government Accountability Board request that municipal clerks obtain birth dates from voters during future elections and consider ways to more easily facilitate the collection of this information,” I said the following in a press release:
“What better way to obtain the birth dates of all voters than a driver’s license or state-issued photo ID?”
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case involving Indiana’s strict photo ID law.
The court's swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy, in questioning the lawyer for the state Democratic Party and ACLU asked, "You want us to invalidate a statute on the ground that it's a minor inconvenience to a small percentage of voters?"
Now the Wall Street Journal in an opinion piece asks the following:
“How can anyone object to asking for ID?”
The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing the photo Id law in Indiana, the strictest photo ID requirement in the nation.
John Fund writes in the Wall Street Journal that without photo ID, voter fraud is easy.
“Indiana officials make the obvious point that, without a photo ID requirement, in-person fraud is "nearly impossible to detect or investigate." A grand jury report prepared by then-Brooklyn District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman in the 1980s revealed how difficult it is to catch perpetrators. It detailed a massive, 14-year conspiracy in which crews of individuals were recruited to go to polling places and vote in the names of fraudulently registered voters, dead voters, and voters who had moved. "The ease and boldness with which these fraudulent schemes were carried out shows the vulnerability of our entire electoral process to unscrupulous and fraudulent misrepresentation," the report concluded. No indictments were issued thanks to the statute of limitations, and because of grants of immunity in return for testimony.
Even modest in-person voter fraud creates trouble in close races. In Washington state's disputed 2004 governor's race, which was won by 129 votes, the election superintendent in Seattle testified in state court that ineligible felons had voted and votes had been cast in the name of the dead. In Milwaukee, Wis., investigators found that, in the state's close 2004 presidential election, more than 200 felons voted illegally and more than 100 people voted twice. In Florida, where the entire 2000 presidential election was decided by 547 votes, almost 65,000 dead people are still listed on the voter rolls--an engraved invitation to fraud. A New York Daily News investigation in 2006 found that between 400 and 1,000 voters registered in Florida and New York City had voted twice in at least one recent election.”
Here is John Fund’s entire opinion piece.
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