Voter ID never had a chance
By By Terry Cassreino / assistant managing editor
April 6, 2003
Voter ID never had a chance. Not this year. Not any year.
Mississippi legislators went through the motions and appeared sincere while debating a proposal this year to require voters show some form of identification before casting ballots in an election. But when House and Senate negotiators reached the point last week in which they had to file a compromise voter ID proposal or else it would die guess what? It died. Again.
Voter ID may make perfect sense particularly after recent, unexpectedly close state and national elections. Mississippi's last governor's race in 1999 was so close the state House had to pick the winner.
But the issue simply has become too volatile and racially divisive among House and Senate members for them to reach a happy compromise. Lawmakers may never be able to compromise on the issue.
It's been that way ever since the issue first appeared in the early 1990s, when many in the Legislature's Democratic majority saw voter ID as a ploy for Republicans to increase their growing role in state government.
Black legislators in particular saw it as a threat to them and a tool to intimidate black voters. Many raised some of those same points in House and Senate debates this year.
Opponents' view
During a Senate debate in February, state Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood, reminded lawmakers about the days when blacks were harassed and intimidated just for trying to register to vote.
A month later, during a House debate, state Rep. Tom Wallace, D-Jackson, said he worried how an elderly relative with a similar name would react if a poll worker warned him he could serve prison time for producing a wrong ID.
Even some white Democrats have strongly opposed voter ID. They fear alienating black voters, a critical Democratic Party voting bloc, could make it tougher for them to win re-election.
Legislators, though, could have eliminated those fears and concerns. Some lawmakers in the House tried to do just that by backing a proposal to let voters show one of 19 forms of identification to vote from a driver's license to a Medicaid card.
In the end, the effort failed.
Federal law
The voter ID proposal this year was tied to a bill originally intended to bring Mississippi into compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002. The federal law was designed to help states replace outdated election equipment to avoid the kind of vote-counting problems Florida had in the 2002 presidential race.
At stake was $34 million in federal funds over three years.
But last week, with House and Senate negotiators deadlocked and unable to compromise on voter ID, the entire bill died for the 2003 Legislature. Mississippi still could receive the $34 million in federal funds because lawmakers already had approved $750,000 in matching state money.
But state lawmakers missed yet another opportunity to do something just as meaningful as replacing outdated election equipment. They missed a chance to make it tougher for people to commit voter fraud. They missed an opportunity to give state election laws more bite.
And as long as the same, divisive racial issues dominate discussion of voter ID, everything will remain status quo.
