Main Street Journal: Online Exclusive: Margie Parsley: Fighting Voter Fraud

The Main Street Journal Website

Fighting Voter Fraud
By: Margie Parsley: President, The League of Women Voters of Tennessee

As our state prepares to implement its new voter photo ID law, the Tennessee League of Women Voters is active with plans to monitor and report its effects. While we hope state education efforts to assure no voter is left behind are successful, we are aware of the hardship this law imposes on minorities, people with disabilities and those without transportation. The League did not support the law because it does not address the stated purpose of voter fraud. According to our research, any recorded instances of voter fraud in Tennessee have been the result of deficiencies or errors in other areas not resolved with this new law and election administrators have done their job well by identifying those cases in the past. Now, League efforts are focused on voter education on the new law and fact-gathering for the legislature as it faces this critical shift in election policy.

League members from across the state gathered in June for a “reading weekend” to study the law, pose questions and consider its consequences. State Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins attended and continues to respond to our queries and concerns. Local League leaders are holding meetings with their county election administrators and hosting public meetings, allowing voters and reporters a non-partisan setting where they learn what voter fraud actually means and understand how this law affects them and others.

Voter fraud occurs when a voter goes intentionally to a poll that is not their true precinct; when a voter intentionally fails to change an address, or registers a business, not a residential address. Voter fraud occurs whenever someone votes absentee without a cause that meets the state requirements. Using a fake name or that of a deceased person is how most people think of voter fraud, but the state requires its registered voter lists be current and maintained, and election workers are trained to identify false signatures at the polls.

Proper implementation requires the efforts of the Secretary of State and its Division of Elections to disseminate information on the new law to all voters and workers of 95 county election administrations. Supporting this huge effort, citizen groups will need to work hard to assure every voter who is registered to vote actually gets to vote in 2012. The Tennessee League of Women Voters and its local leagues are organizing poll-watching projects, as well as education and training across the state to provide non-partisan support for the change.

This new law requires voters to bring a government issued photo ID, such as a driver’s license, passport or gun license to prove their citizenship while student IDs from state colleges are not an accepted form of photo ID. The League of Women Voters of Tennessee believes the implementation of this bill is not furthering the ideals of democracy in Tennessee, and as it stands, the bill will lead to confusion and the disenfranchisement of registered voters across the state.

We agree with Governor Haslam that requiring voters to have photo identification will make it “unnecessarily hard” for some people to cast ballots in next year’s elections and share concern over state readiness and clarity in the law. The law provides little guidance for how to report, and deal with, problems should they occur, or how such problems will be resolved. We urge the Governor to continue to ask questions and seek solutions to problems with this law before they arise, and for all Tennesseans to become educated about this new proposal, and to participate in the 2012 elections process by contacting your elections commission. Our democracy depends on it.

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