Fowler: Republican’s Voter ID Bill Unnecessary

Carol Fowler, chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, issued the following statement Friday in response to the S.C. House’s passage on Thursday of a bill that would require voters to present government-issued photo IDs in order to vote.

“Once again, South Carolina’s Republican House members have chosen to solve a problem that doesn’t exist instead of doing the important work they were sent to do. Rather than find ways to solve this state’s economic difficulties, they spent their time this week looking for ways to keep folks from voting.

“They were unable to produce any examples of people impersonating voters, but they have passed an expensive requirement that everyone produce a government- issued photo ID at the polls. There has been no case of voter fraud that would have been prevented by this law, but Republican House members spent hours on it anyway.

“Republican House Speaker Bobby Harrell knows the math and is familiar with the odds of voter suppression. He knows that a high percentage of the elderly voters who lack driver’s licenses vote Democratic. For every needless obstacle his party erects, eligible voters will be turned away from exercising their most fundamental right as citizens.

“South Carolina Democrats will continue to fight this issue in the S.C. Senate and wherever else our voices can be heard.”

SC Dems Oppose Photo ID Bill

S.C. House Republicans took a step backward with today’s passage of a bill which requires citizens to present a state-issued photo ID before they can vote, said Carol Fowler, chair of the S.C. Democratic Party.

The bill would primarily affect those who don’t have a driver’s license because they’re too poor to own a car or too old to drive one. House Republicans provided no reason to justify the measure, and no means to pay for it. The bill now moves to the S.C. Senate.

“South Carolinians stood for hours in lines last fall to exercise their right to vote. Now State House Republicans who so often decry needless government bureaucracy are creating yet another waiting line for voters and another expense for taxpayers,” Fowler said.

“Republicans saw the massive turnout at the polls last November, and they’re running scared,” Fowler said. “This is their attempt to impose a new burden on voters, draining citizens’ time and running up the costs of elections.”

“Democrats will continue to fight this injustice in the Senate,” she said. “We will push for a sensible plan that drops the House’s new bureaucratic hurdle to voting, and will allow citizens to vote early – without excuse. Our goal is to make voting easier and less costly both for citizens and taxpayers.”

Around the country, Republicans have been introducing photo ID bills, which they justify by raising the specter of voter fraud. Yet, in S.C. House hearings on the bill, election officials and even Republican supporters of the bill said they were not aware of any instances of the kind of voter fraud that the photo ID restriction would supposedly prevent.

Photo identification requirements have become the most common way to suppress votes based on “imprecise and inflated claims of ‘voter fraud,’” according to a 2007 report by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. “Such photo ID laws are effective only in preventing individuals from impersonating other voters at the polls — an occurrence more rare than getting struck by lightning,” the study says.

House Passes Voter ID Bill

Today, the South Carolina House of Representatives passed a bill that will help prevent fraud and secure our state’s election process by incorporating the use of picture identification in voting. Modeled after a Voter ID bill passed by the Indiana Legislature, this bill (H. 3418) is a key element of the SC Secure Election Act, a major agenda item for the House Republican Caucus.

House Speaker Bobby Harrell, lead sponsor of the legislation, said, “The Heart of democracy is the right to vote. If we do not protect that voting right from fraud and abuse, we are not protecting the ideals of democracy.”

Other states have also instituted Voter ID provisions. In Indiana, the requirement to show a picture ID when voting was challenged and the case went all the way to our nation’s highest court. Last year, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Indiana’s law was Constitutional and did not place an undue burden on the voter.

“To say that requiring a picture ID to vote creates an undue burden is absurd,” said Speaker Harrell. “A picture ID is required to do just about anything in our society, except to vote.”