Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and one of the nation’s foremost experts on election law, has published a preview of a new book with a sobering reminder for those of us who oppose the growing body of laws requiring identification in order to vote.
It’s not possible to show, he says, that many people have actually been deterred from voting by these laws. In part, that’s because many of these laws are new, and in part it’s because many of the people who lack an ID card tend not to be interested in voting in the first place.
“Voting should not be a difficult activity; everyone entitled to vote should be able to vote,” he writes on his election-law blog. “We should not put stumbling blocks in front of voters to solve a non-existent problem. The dignity of the voter is just too high.”
