Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

The Supreme Court is about to look at a case (William Crawford v. Marion County Election Board) challenging an Indiana election law requiring that voters (except those voting absentee, such as those in nursing homes) provide state issued identification before they are allowed to cast a ballot. The competing interests in the case are, on one side, the allegation that voter fraud is a significant problem and that requiring voters to provide identification is a reasonable means of deterring voter fraud. On the other side is the belief that the ID requirement will result in eligible voters not voting either because they are turned away for a lack of identification or because as the process is more burdensome they simply stay away from the polls

The real argument is mainly political. Minority and poor voter are more likely not to have the proper ID despite being otherwise eligible. Poor and minority voters vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates. Any suppression of this voting block will help Republican candidates while any increase in their participation will help Democratic candidates.

The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld the law, determining that the danger of voter fraud outweighed the danger of disenfranchisement. The majority opinion, by Richard Posner, asserted that "The benefits of voting to the individual voter are elusive..." and that this was a reasonable means to deter voting fraud. This despite the fact that it is already criminal to commit voting fraud and "as far as anyone knows, no one in Indiana, and not many people elsewhere, are known to have been prosecuted for impersonating a registered voter."

The central legal question in the case will turn on determining the correct standard of review. If the law were reviewed under strict scrutiny Indiana would have to show that a compelling state interest was at stake and that this law was narrowly tailored to secure that state interest, or that there was no less burdensome means of achieving that interest. Few laws ever survive this level of scrutiny.

But to look at it as a simple balancing test, closer to what Posner did, we simply need identify the larger danger, voter fraud or disenfranchisement. There are several ways to look at this. Which is the larger problem, voter fraud or low voter participation. More specifically, voters being turned away for a lack of ID or voters pretending to be someone else to vote illegally. Beyond that how many voters will not even try because of the extra burden versus the voter fraud that will be avoided preemptively by the law.

It is interesting to note that increasing voter participation automatically dilutes the effect of any fraudulent votes, (i.e. if only ten people were to vote, two fraudulent votes represent 20% of the total but every additional legitimate vote will decrease that percentage). But reducing voter fraud does absolutely nothing to enfranchise those who have been wrongly prohibited from voting.

From a results based perspective, is it more likely that the result of an election will be effected by having legitimate voters turned away or not even try to vote because of the law, or that the result of an election will be effected by the laws effect of reducing fraudulent voting. In practice there is little evidence of widespread voter fraud but it is equally unclear how many people that are eligible will not vote because of the ID requirement. If we knew the precise answers to these questions it might just be simple math. For example if we knew the law would prevent five fraudulent votes but would disenfranchise 25 voters the law is 'bad', but if it prevents 25 instances of voter fraud while only disenfranchising five voters it would be a good law. However we do not have these answers.

Without these answers we must either err on the side, of ensuring that all eligible voters are allowed to vote but increase the risk that some may vote illegally or, of taking greater measures to reduce voting fraud but acknowledge that some eligible voters will be prohibited or deterred from voting. In the absence of any indication of widespread voter fraud, to knowingly disenfranchise voters seems unsupportable.

additional resources
Brennan Center for Justice
ACLU
LA Times editorial
Non Profit Vote

You’d have to get a lot of spiders together and feed them a whole lot of food to make a web that big,

My son gave me my birthday present last night. It is a book by Arianna Huffington, Fanatics and Fools. Without an aside to explain my political leanings or Arianna Huffington's writing, this is a book I'll likely read and enjoy. In fact it is one of the more personally appropriate and seemingly thoughtful gifts I've received in a while. My parents or sisters likely would not know me well enough to buy this book, although my wife and a few of my closer friends might. What makes this gift from my son particularly interesting to me is that he is five years old and he picked it out all by himself, in fact he picked it out once and my wife put it back but he found it again and insisted that he wanted to give it to me for my birthday. I have no idea how he chose it but I do have some idea how he convinced my wife to buy it for me on his behalf.

Five year olds are incredibly persuasive; they are shameless and persistent. They have fully functioning brains but relatively tiny skulls. As a result I believe that their synapses must be more tightly packed, making that synaptic gap a little smaller. While in the case of any single synapse this makes little difference but with many synapses the difference becomes significant. This allows them to think very quickly. Their brains also contains very little actual knowledge, there is nothing to bog down its processes (remember how fast your computer was when it was new?). They can make up new reasons and ideas to support their point of view faster than you can begin to get your head around an explanation as to why it is not a good idea to shoot the fish with the paintball gun, and wonder who told them about paintball guns anyway and where did he get that fish. He has already made two chipmunk traps out of laundry baskets by the time paintball fish thought has run through your mind. To him it must seem like my thoughts are standing still while his move like that lady in the Matrix movie. No wonder he gets bored and impatient. He does about a month's worth of thinking everyday. He's so cool.