Michael Thielen asks if Jimmy Carter is a racist because he too supports (or supported) voter identification requirements.   Nowhere in my released chapter or upcoming book do I make a claim that all supporters of voter i.d. laws are racist. I don’t believe that’s true.  Indeed, I have seen nothing from Hans von Spakovsky on voter i.d. which I count as race-baiting.

But there’s also no question that some proponents of voter identification have played the race card, as detailed in the chapter.  Consider Thor Hearne’s now-defunct American Center for Voting Rights, and its highlighting of fraudulent voter registrations by “Jive F. Turkey, Jr.” and allegations that the NAACP and ACORN were involved in conspiracies to pay voter registrars with crack cocaine.  (This is all based upon a single incident described in detail in my book and which shows absolutely no organizational effort to do so.) And then there are are the 2010 comments of Dick Armey on FOX about fraud in “urban” areas, and other language I highlight which appears to me to be race-baiting.

My problem with von Spakovsky’s writing on voter i.d. has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with his claiming that voter identification laws are supported by a purpose in preventing impersonation voter fraud—a type of fraud which, as I argue in the chapter is both illogical and unsupported by any real evidence of any systemic problem. (And yes, I deal with the question of how we might know if fraud exists if people try to hide it.)  As will be clear in other parts of the book, von Spakovsky’s motivation here and elsewhere in the election administration world is partisan, not racist.  More on that when the book appears this summer.

I’d love to see Mr. Thielen address the claims I made in the chapter about the prevalence of the type of voter fraud which a voter id could prevent, rather than try to associate me with ideas with which I disagree. He suggests I agree with comments of Al Sharpton and others about how these laws are the new Jim Crow.  As any regular readers of my blog know, I have fought this analogy very hard (most recently today) and have been quoted in newspaper’s rejecting Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz’s and other Democrats’ use of the “Jim Crow” analogy to voter i.d. laws.  Let’s talk about the issue of voter i.d. on the merits.  Is it justified by a real issue of voter fraud or to preserve voter confidence? I say no for substantive reasons in my chapter.

(As an aside, the Carter-Baker report, which recommended identification requirements only if steps were taken to insure everyone could easily get an i.d., was flawed both as a process and a document.  I served as an academic “advisor” to the group.  I’d suggest anyone interested check out Commissioner Spencer Overton’s CarterBakerDissent.com site. Spencer was not even allowed to include his full dissent in the Carter-Baker report itself.)