The Carter-Baker Commission Report entitled Building Confidence in U.S. Elections was published on 9/19/05. The most controversial proposal would require photo ID's for all voters, which Democrats denounced as a "poll tax." 

The inevitable result of the photo ID requirement will be "Katrina Democracy" - people with cars (and therefore photo ID's) will get to vote, while people without cars (and photo ID's) will be "left behind" to suffer without political power and drown in their powerlessness, just like the poor citizens of New Orleans. For this reason, Rep. John Conyers declared it "dead on arrival."

"I am shocked that this Commission has decided to take us several giant steps back in the march for voting rights by recommending a national ID requirement for voters. This would inevitably disenfranchise minority voters and the most vulnerable among us -- those who live in poverty and the elderly. While I continue to believe that the 2004 elections showed our desperate need for election reforms, this misguided and highly controversial recommendation makes this Commission's entire report -- regardless of the merits of other recommendations -- dead on arrival from a civil rights and voting rights perspective.  As a result, I am unalterably opposed to these discriminatory new requirements and will encourage my colleagues in the House and Senate to join with me in doing so.

Moreover, a photo ID requirement for voting would help create a de facto "National Identity Card," something liberals and conservatives have long opposed because it reverses the basis of our Constitution from "government by the consent of the people" to "people by the consent of the government." In other words, if you don't produce your "papers" you can be denied the ordinary rights of citizenship that we take for granted, like being able to walk down the street without being stopped and searched by a cop. (Conservatives used to be particularly vehement in their opposition to this and all other forms of "big government," but that all changed with Ronald Reagan and the New Right.) As Conyers declared:

A national voter ID card system would significantly diminish freedom and privacy in the US because once put in place, it is unlikely that such a system would be restricted to its original purpose. A national voter ID system would threaten the privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and will gradually increase the control that government and business wields over everyday citizens.

In reality, there is no significant need for any form of voter ID. It is already a felony to vote more than once, or to vote in someone else's name. Since the cost of getting caught (a felony conviction that will ruin your life) so greatly outweighs the benefit of doing it (casting one extra vote that has an infinitesimal chance of changing the outcome), no rational person would commit this crime.

When voter fraud occurs, it is practically never done in person at polling places. You must sign in, and your signature could betray you (unless you are an expert at handwriting fraud). Your face could betray you too, if the inspector knew the real voter's face. That is why it is almost impossible to find documented cases of in-person voter fraud - which is the only form of fraud that would theoretically be reduced by photo ID's.

In reality, most voter fraud is done through absentee ballots, where someone can slowly copy a signature with minimal risk of getting caught. There are many cases of absentee fraud, including the infamous 1997 Miami Mayor's race that was overturned by a judge. The photo ID requirement would do nothing to stop absentee fraud - unless such votes had to be notarized, which is tellingly not part of Baker's proposal. (Why is it perfectly ok to inconvenience poor Americans in a major way, but unacceptable to inconvenience more affluent Americans in the slightest?)

Still, Republicans have convinced themselves that in-person voting fraud is possible because voter registration files include non-existent, ineligible, and duplicate voters. When files are inaccurate, it creates a theoretical possibility that voters could vote more than once, or vote when they are not eligible. This principle applies even more to absentee voting than to in-person voting.

Either way (in-person or absentee), the solution to inaccurate files is creating accurate voter files - not imposing a voter ID requirement. So let me offer a much simpler solution that guarantees an accurate voter file and saves county governments billions of dollars!!

Let's use the Social Security file as the national voter registration file.

Everyone in America has a unique Social Security record (which is designated by a unique number, but is technically independent of the number that is initially assigned). Virtually every newborn gets one (to qualify for health coverage and/or a tax deduction) and every teen or adult must have one in order to work. You keep your account throughout your life, even if you need to change the original number because of identity theft or domestic abuse. So why don't we just make that record (without the Social Security number) the authoritative voter record of every citizen? (1)

This would have huge advantages over the current system:

1. It would make voter registration automatic. You would never have to fill out a registration form to vote - which is a major obstacle to voting for many citizens.

2. County governments would not have to laboriously maintain complete voter files. Instead, they would simply download the Social Security file (name, address, and citizenship status) for their county right before each election, merge in signature samples (and party codes for restricted primaries), and print out sign-in sheets for each precinct. This would save county governments billions of dollars each year in staff, postage, printing, and storage space.

3. The number of errors in the system would be reduced to a tiny fraction of the current system, so there would be practically no need for provisional ballots and all the hassles that go with them.

4. The tiny problem of voter fraud would be made even tinier. Duplicate registrations (which typically occur when someone moves and re-registers without cancelling the old registration) would become impossible, because a Social Security account has a single address. Dead voters would be removed as soon as Social Security is notified, which is pretty quick (because they have to stop the checks).

5. The Social Security file would get "cleaner" over time, if voters discovered the file had an out-of-date surname or address and provided a new one. (Such voters would cast a provisional ballot until the Social Security file was updated.) This would make life better for the Social Security Administration, as well as beneficiaries and Members of Congress who have to struggle with inaccurate files.

Are there any downsides? None that I can see.

1. Would Social Security Numbers be used and exposed to identity theft? Absolutely not because there's no need for the Social Security Administration to deliver any Social Security Numbers to the Boards of Election. They would only deliver unique, accurate voter lists with name, address, and possibly citizenship status. You would never be asked for your Social Security Number when you vote. All that matters is whether your name is on the sign-in sheet - just the way it works now. Your identity would be verified by matching your sign-in signature with your stored signature sample - just the way it works now.

2. Would non-citizens be able to vote if prohibited by state laws? No, because Social Security checks the citizenship of all applicants (2), and presumably stores that information in each record. (And presumably this information is more accurate than any information now stored by county election boards, which rely on voters' signed oaths that they are citizens, but have no resources to check birth certificates.) At election time, Social Security could download all records including the citizenship flag so counties could apply their state and local laws. (If sharing that detail violates immigration laws, Social Security could simply exclude non-citizens from the downloaded lists.)

3. Would felons be able to vote even if prohibited by state laws? This problem could be solved by having counties match the Social Security file against their felon file to remove felons before delivering voter files to each county. But this would have to be done according to strictly accurate matching procedures (possibly including Social Security numbers), not the deliberately inaccurate matches used by Florida in 2000. And there would have to be provisional ballot procedures if eligible voters were wrongly told they were ineligible to vote - just as there are now.

4. Could an ineligible voter cast a vote under someone else's name? Sure - just as they can now. But as I describe above, this almost never happens because it's a crime whose cost infinitely exceeds its benefit. If Republicans can prove that this happens frequently enough to come up with a "big government" bureaucratic solution, there are two obvious "small government" solutions that would solve 99.9% of all problems:

• to prevent duplicate voting: dip voters' thumbs in purple ink, just as we celebrated in Iraq
• to prevent impersonation: allow any common form of ID - student cards, Medicare/Medicaid cards, electric bills, etc.

This plan could be implemented starting immediately and completed by the 2006 election (if it was a national priority) or otherwise by 2008.

1. The Social Security Administration would have to create a secure system to download county files to authorized county officials. (This could be done in 3 months if SSA has a decent computer system.)

2. County election boards would have to acquire the capability to download their county file and then match the street addresses against the precinct table so they can print sign-in sheets for each precinct. (Most counties have that capability already; if not, a specialized vendor could provide it easily.)

3. Counties would also have to scan and store all current voter signature samples, and add this image to the voter's record. (Many counties have that capability already; if not, a specialized vendor could also provide it easily.) This voter/signature file would have to be matched against the downloaded Social Security voter file. (As an alternative, the Social Security Administration could add signatures nationally from state driver's license files.)

4. In states that restrict primary voting to registered party members, counties would have to match their voter/party files against the downloaded Social Security voter file.  (As an alternative, the Social Security Administration could permanently store the party code for each voter, subject to strict privacy rules. But some voters would never "trust" SSA with this information, so this approach should be set aside until this legitimate concern is resolved, if it ever is.)

So that's my simple plan. Jimmy Carter and James Baker, are you listening?

Footnotes:

(1) The Social Security Administration only maintains primary address records for current Social Security recipients. (Social Security recipients can update their address at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/coa/) For everyone else, SSA gets your current address from the IRS every year to send your annual statement. (The IRS lets you change your address using Form 8822, but relies primarily on the Postal Service's automated NCOA system to maintain current addresses, which in turn relies on citizens to submit address changes to USPS via the web, by phone (800-ASK-USPS) or using a paper form at a Post Office.)

(2) There are millions of noncitizens in the U.S., and many have Social Security Numbers - but they are identified as noncitizens in the Social Security file and are ineligible to vote. In order to get a Social Security Number, noncitizens must submit a SS-5 form, which distinguishes U.S. Citizens, Legal Aliens Allowed to Work, Legal Aliens Not Allowed to Work, and Other. To prove citizenship (and thus be eligible to vote), an applicant must provide a U.S. consular report of birth, a U.S. passport, a Certificate of Citizenship, or a Certificate of Naturalization. These documents are verified by the Social Security Administration, so they are much more reliable than the records kept by county election boards, which rely primarily on the citizenship checkbox on the voter registration form.