What is going on in Missouri? First, we get word that anti-labor forces are launching a campaign to amend the state constitution so that all union elections must be conducted by what they call “secret ballot.” Now it appears that two Republicans in the state legislature are reigniting a failed effort to institute a constitutionally-mandated, highly-restrictive voter ID law.
Project Vote has the scoop. As you may recall, lawmakers proposed a change to Missouri’s constitution in May requiring citizens to provide both citizenship and government-issued photo IDs to vote. Such a move would have been even tougher than the Indiana statute upheld by the Supreme Court last year and would have disenfranchised an estimated 240,000 citizens. Thanks to the work of a broad coalition of groups and voters across the state who educated citizens about the negative impact of such policy changes and lobbied legislators to ignore the bill, Missouri officials left the year’s legislative session without voting on the law.
But in late December, Republicans Stanley Cox and Bob Nance refiled the referendum. It was read in the House on both Wednesday and Thursday and is awaiting action, no doubt spurred by the recent indictment of an ACORN voter registration worker who faces two felony counts of voter registration fraud.
But as we emphasized ad nauseum during the election season, there is a world of difference between voter fraud -- which voter ID laws ostensibly protect against -- and voter registration fraud. Missouri state officials have made no indication that any actual voter fraud was perpetrated this election season, not a surprising conclusion given that it never happens.
If Missouri lawmakers really want to ensure election security, the Brennan Center provides a wealth of alternatives to ID laws that are worth pursuing. Hopefully, the voting rights community in the Show Me State will fight this initiative in 2009 just as they did when a presidential election was on the line.
Image used under a Creative Commons license by Flickr user PhosphoricX3.
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