Kathy Dopp, founder of Utah Counts Votes and national leading authority on election integrity, has issued the announcement below along with her reaction to the Utah Voter ID Bill:
Gov Ops Meeting Today am & Utah Voter ID Bill
Members of the House Government Operations Standing Committee
Rep. Craig A. Frank, Chair
Rep. Keith Grover, Vice Chair
Committee Meeting
DATE: Thursday, January 29, 2009
TIME: 9:00 AM
PLACE: 20 House Building, Utah State Capitol Complex
http://www.le.state.ut.us/asp/Interim/Commit.asp?Year=2009&Com=HSTGOC
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Bill would make Utah voter ID laws stricter
Associated Press – January 28, 2009
MY RESPONSE TO THE VOTER ID BILL
A picture voter ID requirement is a solution in search of a problem. All the research done by researchers who are both Democratic and Republican show that the amount of votER fraud (ineligible voters
voting) is less than a dozen voters per state at most in any election (and these voters probably cancel each other out in most cases.)There are two extensive studies on the issue of voter fraud that can be found linked from The Century Foundation’s web site (one of the studies was commissioned by the EAC.) Also an exhaustive search for ineligible voters in Washington state following the 2004 contested gubernatorial election found only 7 voters who had voted who were ineligible in the entire state, all of them by mistake.
Voter picture ID laws apparently cause a lot of voter disenfranchisement in states that require photo ID because about 10%
(+-) of voters do not have any photo ID. A photo ID requirement tends to disproportionately disenfranchise poor voters who do not own cars so do not drive, etc.I personally think it would be OK to implement a photo ID requirement only in the case that the state issues free IDs and a voter may vote once without it if they fill in an application for the free photo ID when they vote and provide another type of ID that Utah already requires for first time voters. But that would require a camera to take the free photo ID pictures at the poll locs along with taking the applications. I think Utah’s current voter ID requirements are OK to extend that requirement to all voters (photo ID not required now), but then many voting rights people may disagree with me on that. And I would defer to voting rights advocates because it’s not my issue.
Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis.
Post-Election Vote Count Audit
A Short Legislative & Administrative Proposal
http://electionmathematics.org//ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/Vote-Count-Audit-Bill-2009.pdf
History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of
Election Auditing Fundamentals
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf
Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf
Filed under: Election Integrity, Elections
