The young woman addressing the assembled activists had a depth of experience in deep canvassing. Rather than trying to get people to vote or to vote for a specific candidate, deep canvassing involves front-porch conversations more about listening than persuading. It is a technique for changing hearts and minds over time, especially in conservative, rural America.
After several encounters with one man in a county west of here, she finally saw that the source of his general resentment was not liberals or government at all. He had lost a good friend to opioid addiction. He needed someone to blame for it.
What brings that to mind is Russell Berman’s article in The Atlantic about voter ID. Especially, issuing some form of national identity card to use for voting. “[T]he nation’s current hodgepodge of identifiers stuffs the wallets of some people but leaves millions of Americans empty-handed and disenfranchised.” National ID cards are the norm in many countries.
The problem in the U.S. is that the concept evokes images of Big Brother across the political spectrum.
“There are only three problems with a national ID: Republicans hate it, Libertarians hate it, and Democrats hate it,” says Kathleen Unger, the founder of VoteRiders, an organization devoted to helping people obtain ID.
Even so, Republicans have spent decades promoting the idea. Insisting on it. Election integrity, voter fraud, and all that. But like the rural man hostile to liberals and government, those are not the real reason Republicans insist on IDs for voting. “Studies over the years have found that as many as one in 10 citizens lacks the documentation needed to vote. Those who do are disproportionately Black, Hispanic, poor, or over the age of 65,” Berman writes:
To understand why Democrats have so strenuously opposed voter-ID laws over the past two decades, consider the experience of Spread the Vote. With a staff of 16 and a budget of $1.6 million, the organization now operates in 17 states that require an ID to vote. [Spread the Vote’s Kat] Calvin’s staff and volunteers work with people—many of whom are homeless or were recently incarcerated—to assemble and pay for the necessary documents. Securing just a single valid ID can take days or weeks. In its four years of existence, Spread the Vote has been able to get IDs for about 7,000 people. The organization estimates that the number of eligible voters in the U.S. who lack the IDs they need to cast a ballot is at least 21 million.
Generally, Democrats have long believed that negotiating with Republicans over ID laws was pointless because the GOP’s insistence on them was less about protecting ballot integrity than about shaping the electorate to its advantage by suppressing the votes of people likely to back its opponents. “It’s hard not to see it as a part of a comprehensive strategy to engineer outcomes,” Deval Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor (and, briefly, a 2020 presidential contender), told me.
Because it is.
But in the current fight to pass voting rights legislation through Congress, even Democrats are rethinking the ID requirement. Even voting-rights icon Stacey Abrams and Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina will consider Sen. Joe Manchin’s proposal to add some form of ID requirement to the bill.
To Calvin, however, the initial acquiescence of Democrats such as Abrams and Clyburn to an ID proposal was a betrayal. “My reaction was blinding rage followed by massive heartbreak and disappointment,” she told me. A utility bill, she said, was a meaningless alternative for most of the people she tries to assist. “My whole job is helping people who don’t have utility bills get IDs,” she said. “What they were saying is: If you don’t have a home or an apartment or if your name isn’t on the lease on that home or apartment, you don’t deserve to vote, you don’t deserve to participate in democracy.”
Calvin told me she would enthusiastically support a national voter-ID law on one condition: if it followed immediately after the creation of a national ID for everybody, “with a plan and a budget to implement it.” She suffers no illusions about the likelihood of that happening, however. “It’s a pipe dream,” she said. Calvin’s right. Democrats may be open to requiring voter ID, but the prospect of a national ID is still too hot to touch.
But beside logistical obstacles, there is another reason to oppose the ID requirement. Satisfy that demand and Republicans will just make another. Because voter fraud is not the real source of their election anxieties any more than liberals or big government were to blame for the opioid addiction cited above. Republicans champion requiring IDs to vote because in their minds the hurdle will require nothing of most of their voters. It will impact more Democratic voters than Republican ones, even though it will impact their own, too. It’s a game of percentages. Resistance to IDs feeds their narrative that Democrats oppose it because they want to cheat. Either way, they win.
Satisfy Republicans’ demand and they’ll simply make another. With abortion as well. The issue is too powerful to lose for Republican voter mobilization. Should the Supreme Court finally kill Roe, another issue will have to be found to replace it.
They want their weapon, as Dustin Hoffman said in Outbreak.