Anti-ID zealots point to the Brennan Center for Justice of NYU, which sponsored a survey in 2006 to ask people if they had a current photo ID. They’ve been trumpeting the results ever since:
As many as 11 percent of United States citizens – more than 21 million individuals – do not have government-issued photo identification. Eleven percent of the American citizens surveyed responded that they do not have current, unexpired government-issued identification with a photograph, such as a driver’s license or military ID. Using 2000 census calculations of the citizen voting-age population, this translates to more than 21 million American adult citizens nationwide who do not possess valid government photo ID.
But before we get too worried about disenfranchising all those poor ID-less voters, let’s look at the questions they asked:
1) Do you have a current, unexpired government-issued ID with your picture on it, like a driver’s license or a military ID?
2) If yes, does this photo ID have both your current address AND your current name (as opposed to a maiden name) on it?
3) Do you have any of the following citizenship documents (U.S. birth certificate/U.S. passport/U.S. naturalization papers) in a place where you can quickly find it if you had to show it tomorrow?
4) If yes, does [that document] have your current name on it (as opposed to a maiden name)?
Now a lot of people have a drivers license with an old address on it. In fact, I do, and so does my wife. But in my state that’s no problem – the state doesn’t require a current address for your drivers license to be accepted as valid ID (sometimes you have to show them a recent bill with your current address on it).
So we would have been part of the 11%, even though we have had valid IDs for 35 years.
You can also consider the number of voters vs. the number of drivers licenses. Since drivers licenses are issued to people who aren’t eligible (felons, legal aliens, people under 18), we’ll compare the entire voting age public (not just eligible voters) against the all drivers licenses issued (minus the 16 & 17 year olds). That will give us a reasonable guesstimate as to how many people are eligible to vote with just drivers licenses.
In 2010, there were 235,940,406 people of voting age in the US.
In 2010, there were 206,332,870 people of voting age with drivers licenses in the US.
That means that 87.5% of the voting age public had drivers licenses.
Now let’s take a look at results from the 2008 elections. A group of academics surveyed voters on their voting experience. Among their questions were:
What type of picture identification did you show?
| Frequency | Percentage | |
|---|---|---|
| Driver’s License | 3,603 | 87.9% |
| Passport | 24 | 0.6% |
| Voter Reg. Card | 262 | 6.4% |
| Other Gov’t Picture ID | 158 | 3.9% |
| Non Gov Picture ID | 20 | 0.5% |
| Non-Picture ID | 8 | 0.2% |
| Bill, letter, package | 9 | 0.2% |
| Although asked, did not show ID | 3 | 0.1% |
| I Don’t Remember | 11 | 0.3% |
| Total | 4098 | 100.0% |
Hmmmm. 87.5% of the voting age public has a drivers license, and 87.9% used their license to prove identification. Those numbers are unbelievably close, indicating that the numbers associated with other forms of ID are likely to be representative of the public as a whole. And as we can see, the overwhelming majority were able to present a picture ID.
That same survey said that among the 2000 registered voters interviewed by phone, 97.3% voted (p. 115). Of the 2.7% who did not vote, lack of proper ID was found to be a 5.5% effect. So perhaps 0.15% of voters were inhibited by improper ID.
Now, there may be a disproportionate number of people out there who didn’t register to vote because they lacked ID, but since the percentage of people using drivers licenses matches the percentage of people with drivers licenses, I don’t think it’s very likely.
In short, the Photo ID controversy shouldn’t be much of a controversy at all. And that 11% number is wildly inflated.
