Following up on this post, David J. Becker writes on the election law listserv that new voter i.d. rules in Georgia and Indiana may be open to attack if defended by the state as a valid anti-fraud measure because the measures exclude absentee ballots from the requirement. As noted by Hans von Spakovsky (who wrote this submission to the Caltech-MIT voting project before working for the Justice Department on voting integrity issues—see this unflattering New Yorker profile), absentee ballots likely present the greatest risk of election fraud from voters. So it could be that a court applying even a low level of scrutiny to a voter i.d. requirement from one of these states could strike it down as not rationally related to the undoubtedly legitimate state purpose of preventing fraud and promoting voter integrity.
There is also a potential racial disparity to the extent that minorities are less likely to use absentee ballots (as I have heard, without seeing evidence, is true in Georgia). If the voter i.d. change in a covered jurisdiction like Georgia can be said to retrogress the position of minorities with respect to the exercise of the franchise, there’s a strong argument the Justice Department should deny preclearance to the Georgia i.d. rule under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. For more on the potential racial disparities of a voter i.d. requirement, see Spencer Overton’s recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution oped.
These criticisms do not apply to proposals like mine for universal voter registration coupled with a government issued voter identification, particularly where (as I advocate) the government takes affirmative steps to find voters and register them to vote. I’d require that those wishing to vote by absentee ballot include a readable thumb print on their ballots, which could be checked against voter i.d. records.