Article

The Fraud of Voter ID Laws

Everything was supposed to change after Bush v. Gore. Never again would the outcome of a presidential election be left in the hands of nine Supreme Court justices who issued their opinion amid nation-wide questions of "hanging chads" and "butterfly ballots." In its opinion, the court said it anticipated "legislative bodies nationwide" would "examine ways to improve the mechanisms and machinery for voting" in order to avoid a repeat of the 2000 recount disaster. Seven years later, however, local, state, and federal governments have failed to fix these flawed voting "mechanisms," leaving the country with low-quality voter registration databases and inadequate safeguards for maintaining voter rolls.

Everything was supposed to change after Bush v. Gore. Never again would the outcome of a presidential election be left in the hands of nine Supreme Court justices who issued their opinion amid nation-wide questions of "hanging chads" and "butterfly ballots." In its opinion, the court said it anticipated "legislative bodies nationwide" would "examine ways to improve the mechanisms and machinery for voting" in order to avoid a repeat of the 2000 recount disaster.

Seven years later, however, local, state, and federal governments have failed to fix these flawed voting "mechanisms," leaving the country with low-quality voter registration databases and inadequate safeguards for maintaining voter rolls. It takes a hacker just one minute to break into an electronic voting machine.

Read more here.

The positions of American Progress, and our policy experts, are independent, and the findings and conclusions presented are those of American Progress alone. A full list of supporters is available here. American Progress would like to acknowledge the many generous supporters who make our work possible.