Why is this Information Not Offered?

[paft.livejournal.com]

Back in July, I posted a video a woman took while trying to get her son a voting ID in Wisconsin. At the time what I emphasized was the fact that the DMV apparently considered “bank activity” a requirement for voting. But there was more to the conversation. Given information that’s recently linked about about DMV employees being instructed NOT to offer certain information, it’s worth seeing again. The pertinent part of the conversation begins at about the 4.30 mark:

Woman: If someone were to just say thet needed a state ID card, would they know it was free, if it was for voting?

Man at DMV: Uhhh, unless they tell us it was for voting, we charge ‘em. Cause it’s….

Woman: Why is that, because with the new law, the Voter ID bill…

Man at DMV: It’s going to discourage them.

Woman: They’re…It’s supposed to be free.

Man at DMV: If it’s for…

Woman: So why wouldn’t you tell them that, right from the start, “Voter ID is free.”

Man at DMV: They’re the same card, so, unless you come in and specifically request it, we charge you for it. Like, let’s say you’re 20 and you’re going on a trip. You may not vote, so we’re still going to charge them for that card.

Woman: But would you ask them? Would you say “is this for voting, or…

Man at DMV: If they check the box, so…um, it’s, you know, one of them where… They shouldn’t even be doing any of it, but it’s one of them where they wanted to make this law, and now it’s going to affect a lot of people, so if it’s for voting, we do it for free, but we don’t know that they’re going to use it for voting.

Woman: Why don’t you have that as a, you know, I would like to ask your supervisor, why don’t you ask people, “Is this for voting? Is this ID for voting or is it for something else?”

Man at DMV: They put it on here and that satisifies the state statute so, um you know I can’t really answer that question.

Woman: I would like to ask your supervisor that question.

Man at DMV: Okay, I’ll go get him...

Supervisor: They need to ask for it. It’s something that is available but they should ask for it.

Woman: But why not ask them, “Is this a voter ID card or a regular ID card?”

Supervisor: Because… the, the, pol… (seems at a loss)

Woman: I mean, have you been given instructions?

Supervisor: Yeah, the problem, the instruction is that if someone comes in and says “I need an ID card to go and vote,” that it’s free. If it is an original issuance or a renewal. But if someone comes in and they’ve lost their ID, it’s not within its renewal period and they need a replacement, then we have to charge for it. So a replacement, a duplicate...

Woman: But couldn’t you ask them, “Is this a renewal or a replacement or is this for a Voter ID?"

Supervisor: Our instruction is to let them ask.

Woman: And so who gave you that direction?

Supervisor: Well, it’s from the powers-that-be.

Woman: Who would that be?

Supervisor: Well, that would be, the next step in my chain of command would be Tracy Howard…

In fact, it was recently revealed that the instructions came from a top Department of Transportation official Steve Kreaiser:

While you should certainly help customers who come in asking for a free ID to check the appropriate box, you should refrain from offering the free version to customers who do not ask for it.

If the DMV officials in the video seem a wee bit ambivalent to you, it’s probably not your imagination. Recently a Wisconsin state employee was fired for sending out an email calling people so spread the word about the free IDs.

An interview with the employee can be heard here.

Whether or not the employee was wise to do what he did, this raises questions about the motives behind this voter ID law. Why would specific instructions go out for DMV officials not to offer information that would prevent applicants from essentially paying for the right to vote?

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

Comments

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

People going to the DMV for a voter ID will be asking for a voter ID. The DMV has to assume IDs are for
 other identification purposes, as a voter ID probably won't be able to
 act as a legal ID anywhere else.

The Wisconsin voter ID was created strictly to keep in place the law requiring a photo ID (any photo ID) to vote; said law was put into place at the end of May of this year, or about three months ago. Assuming they're getting a regular ID for purposes other than voting is indeed something they have to do, but not because it makes the most sense--it's because that's literally what they must do, as per instructions. Why? Some potential voters may be unaware the free voter ID exists. Some may be unaware that it is free. Of those people, some may think they're financially unable to vote, or simply not want to spend the money, or will spend money they can ill afford unnecessarily just to be eligible to vote. Is there any reason you can think of why DMV employees should be discouraged from informing them of the free voter ID?

 "But I thought I could get a free voter ID."
"Oh, you can."
"Okay, I'll have one of those."

I'm talking about people unaware that they have a free option.

The answer is likely easier than what's being posted.

It's on their DMV website, at least, so that's good. Still wondering though.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Is there any reason you can think of why DMV employees should be discouraged from informing them of the free voter ID?

To keep people from trying to get a free voter ID instead of an ID that actually means something outside of the voting place. Saves work and time for when they'd inevitably have to come back.

I'm talking about people unaware that they have a free option.

If you're going in for a voter ID, you know.

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

To keep people from trying to get a free voter ID instead of an ID that actually means something outside of the voting place. Saves work and time for when they'd inevitably have to come back.

From the sound of it a voter ID card and a non drivers license ID are the same thing, except if you go there saying you need it strictly for voting you can get it for free.

So unless they inevitably decide they want to start driving, they won't have to come back.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

From the sound of it a voter ID card and a non drivers license ID are the same thing, except if you go there saying you need it strictly for voting you can get it for free.

I could be wrong, but I don't think that's the case.

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

To keep people from trying to get a free voter ID instead of an ID that actually means something outside of the voting place. Saves work and time for when they'd inevitably have to come back.

So not telling them about the voter ID at all is preferable to saying "this ID is only good for voting?" Not buying it, sorry.


If you're going in for a voter ID, you know.

But if you're going in for an ID in order to vote, you may not. Again, the ID-to-vote law was put on the books three months ago, and the law itself only requires any kind of photo ID--it's a perfectly reasonable scenario for someone to go in and pay for a license just to vote (or more to the point, decide not to), if they're unaware of the voting-specific form of ID available. (I've been trying to find out but I'm not sure how much newer the voter ID is; all I know is that it did not arrive the same day as the law, but was a later response to potential challenges to the law. It's a new option, is what I'm saying.)

There's just no reasonable basis to assume anyone getting an ID for voting purposes already knows the voting-specific ID exists.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

So not telling them about the voter ID at all is preferable to saying "this ID is only good for voting?" Not buying it, sorry.

That's fine. You might not buy the entire concept to begin with, either.

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

LOL, the entire concept of what, your imaginary cost/benefit analyses? No, not really.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Of voter Id laws, specifically.

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

Ah. Well, they do have a way of popping up in areas where voter fraud has not been demonstrated to be a problem. Wisconsin had a whopping twenty instances of voter fraud out of millions of votes cast in the 2008 election, and none of them involved identity issues.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

And how many identity issues were investigated? You know the issue in investigating voter identification fraud, right? How the basic fraud works?

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

Go ahead and elaborate, the floor is yours.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

okay!

So you want to fradulently vote. Your state doesn't require an ID? It's easy!

1) Anytime before an election, pull the voter rolls. It's public information, accessable to everyone. If you're involved with a campaign, you may even have a Voter Vault-style database available to you.
2) Sort the data to note people on the rolls who are of the following:
a) Possibly dead or moved or otherwise unable to vote.(remember, attempts to clean the voter rolls are consistently opposed by many as attempts to disenfranchise otherwise legal voters)
b) People who are legal, registered voters, but never vote.
c) People who are legal, registered voters, but only vote in major elections. Say, once every 4 years for President.
3) Get people involved to assert that they are a certain person who fits 2a-2c.
4) Send people over to the polling place toward the end of the day, preferably after the post-work rush as poll watchers, and have them report back to whoever's in charge as to who hasn't voted yet.
5) Send people over to vote as those people who probably won't be voting.

Congratulations! You're successfully committed voter fraud!

Now, here's the rub:

1) The government generally will not investigate this sort of fraud because it largely goes unnoticed. They're choosing voters that are unlikely to vote, so no one will complain. Sometimes people catch it (http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/09/09/1472583/one-voters-story.html), and I recall a case from the 1980s in NYC that dealt with this directly, but these are the exceptions, obviously.

2) The government investigators will not contact every person who voted after an election to see if they actually voted, either. So there's no way to find out if John Smith, who never votes but was registered when he renewed his license, has suddenly shown an interest in a local election.

Voter ID laws exist to ensure that this sort of activity can't happen. Unless the government is actually willing to investigate this sort of activity, we'll never know how truly widespread it is, but it's way, WAY too easy not to be concerned with.

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

Thanks for being so specific! Seriously.

But...well, turns out I was wrong and one of the twenty people charged with voter fraud in the 2008 Wisconsin election was indeed casting a dead person's vote (http://badgerherald.com/news/2011/02/01/doj_task_force_charg.php), which of course is an identity issue. That's one person discovered after a voter fraud task force combed through eleven counties, so regardless of whether it's generally investigated, in this case it was, and these were the results. Requiring ID for over 5.5 million people because one person in that group was discovered to have committed identity-related voter fraud does not seem like a logical sequence of events to me, I don't know about you. Twice as many people voted twice, a problem not prevented by this law. Six times as many committed "voter registration misconduct"--apparently by lying about citizenship status, though I'm just trying to read between the lines on that one so I may be wrong--which is not prevented by this law. Eleven times as many were convicted felons who voted, a problem not prevented by this law.

And, once this law is put in place anyway, not spreading the news that it costs $0 to comply with it and vote--indeed, firing employees for attempting to do so--sounds less logical still. Still haven't heard a good reason for this; the extra work and confusion you claim it will generate from people who think a voter ID functions as a regular ID could not be easier to avoid.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Well, yes - in this case, they were looking for and found one. It was a specific hunt, and they likely found the needle in the haystack. It's definitely more widespread than that, because it's so impossible to really look for unless you have some sort of real hint.

And, once this law is put in place anyway, not spreading the news that it costs $0 to comply with it and vote--indeed, firing employees for attempting to do so--sounds less logical still.

That this was a fairly national issue tells me this isn't an issue of "spreading the news."

Still haven't heard a good reason for this; the extra work and confusion you claim it will generate from people who think a voter ID functions as a regular ID could not be easier to avoid.

You have a much higher faith in humanity than I.

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

It's definitely more widespread than that, because it's so impossible to really look for unless you have some sort of real hint.

But not in Wisconsin. They looked, and this is what they found. (Not sure what's so impossible about comparing signatures, by the way.) I'm not sure how to put this more plainly. This is actual data on the pervasiveness of identity-related voter fraud in Wisconsin, discovered by people looking specifically for it. It finds that it is not a big problem, and that other forms of fraud not covered by this law were as much as eleven times more common in the 2008 election (and still not a big problem).

That this was a fairly national issue tells me this isn't an issue of "spreading the news."

If by "fairly national issue" you mean "a nationally covered news story," it wasn't as far as I've seen. The law was, and now this discovery of an officially mandated ban on telling people about the free voter ID without being prompted by them, but in between I can't find any big story about the introduction/existence of the free voter ID. Feel free to provide any; I could be wrong.

You have a much higher faith in humanity than I.

On the other hand, I'm not the one who trusts five and a half million citizens to be up on every detail of a three-month-old law when the place they'd be most likely to learn the details has employees instructed not to tell them.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

But not in Wisconsin. They looked, and this is what they found.

So the news hit the other 49 states, but not the state it involves.

This is actual data on the pervasiveness of identity-related voter fraud in Wisconsin, discovered by people looking specifically for it. It finds that it is not a big problem, and that other forms of fraud not covered by this law were as much as eleven times more common in the 2008 election (and still not a big problem).

But, again, they did not do searches for this sort of fraud. You're comparing unlike things.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'That's one person discovered after a voter fraud task force combed through eleven counties'

So after looking through possibly up to tens of thousands in a state of millions they found... one voter who used a dead guys vote.... and 19 others who voted illegally as well.

They didn't verify that every confirmed voter voted.

So you've debunked Jeff.... how?

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

Well, for one thing I looked up populations before telling other people what they were. The combined populations of Milwaukee and Dane counties (the only two of the twelve--not eleven, my bad--mentioned by name in the article I found) is about 1.5 million.

But let's pretend it was just these two, for the sake of having a number to work with. Of this population, .0013% (a little over a thousandth of one percent) were have discovered to have committed voter fraud. Of those people, 95% committed voter fraud an ID law will do absolutely nothing to prevent. 5% of that group--or about .07 thousandths of a percent of the total population--would have been foiled by this law.

So that's how, basically. "They didn't verify that every confirmed voter voted" is something you're going to have to back up, by the way. Calling them at their homes is not the only way to go about it, no matter what Jeff tells you.



Edit: Got the percentages a bit wrong; they were too high before. Now corrected above.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

But 1.5 million didn't vote that day.

Did they call up and verify that all signed voters that day actually voted? Or did they not canvas the rolls carefully to look specifically for fraud that would have been prevented by a Voter ID?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Twice as many people voted twice, a problem not prevented by this law.

How does this law not cover that issue? If you have to show a photo ID when voting, you won't be voting twice.

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

I don't know exactly how they did it, but from the way it was described in the article I read I presume they voted twice in their own name and not once each in two different names. Nothing was said about their impersonating other people, which was mentioned in other cases (the guy trying to cast his dead wife's vote was also voting twice, of course, but was not lumped in with these two).

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

. . . attempts to clean the voter rolls are consistently opposed by many as attempts to disenfranchise otherwise legal voters

Absolutely! Florida pre-2000: About 94,000 people were removed without notification. They made the mistake of being listed as "black."

Yes, roll purges and false voter IDs are both voter fraud. I hope we can agree on that.

The difference, again, is one of degree. Your method compares with throwing shell casings. One could put out an eye!

The other compares with sweeping a crowd with a sub-machine gun.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! Florida pre-2000: About 94,000 people were removed without notification. They made the mistake of being listed as "black."

Untrue on both counts (http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/election2000/election2000_felons2.html). The felon list was not pulled together via race, and there was public notification allowing for appeals.

Yes, roll purges and false voter IDs are both voter fraud. I hope we can agree on that.

Not at all. Roll purges are absolutely necessary, as this sort of voter ID fraud clearly indicates.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Note also the claim states 94,000 were removed with no hint as to whether those 94,000 purged were legal or illegal voters. Just that the act of purging itself is bad.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Everything I read in the linked article supports my claim. What the linked article didn't mention, but what is mentioned in the movie Unprecedented, are the connections between the State government (under Jeb Bush at the time) and ChoicePoint and the specifics on how the purge rolls were generated.

We seem to disagree not that voter fraud happens, but who it benefits. As long as the voters purged vote to the left of the spectrum, it seems, you have no problem. With that observation, I'm done with this useless thread.

Later, until the next useless thread arises.