Oppose Voter ID Legislation: Annotated Bibliography

The articles, “Oppose Voter ID Legislation - Fact Sheet” published by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and “Voter ID laws are good protection against fraud” by Kris Kobach disagree on whether voter fraud is a big issue. The article “Oppose Voter ID Legislation - Fact Sheet” published by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argues many reasons of why we don’t need voter ID’s. This article believes that voter fraud is a very minor problem because it doesn’t happen often. It states, “There is no credible evidence that in-person impersonation voter fraud-- the only type of fraud that photo IDs could prevent - is even minor problem” (ACLU). This proves that voter fraud does not happen often which shows that we do not need the Voter Ids. It also proves that Voter Ids can only stop one form of voter fraud which

One example, “341 felons in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area illegally voted in the 2008 election. Compared with 2.7 million votes cast in the state, 341 seems insignificant but after the recount of the U.S senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken, Franken’s margin of victory was only 312 votes. The illegal votes cast by felons were not discovered until after the recount, making 341 an awfully significant number” (Kobach). This shows that even though the number may be small it can still change the election in the opponent's favor. Another example is that 50 votes were illegally casted by citizens of Somalia, they all voted for J.J. Rizzo, he ended up winning by one vote. Once again, this shows that even though there are few voter fraud situations it can still change the winner of the election. Overall, Voter Ids were created to stop voter fraud, one side believes that voter fraud is not a problem because it does not happen often. The other side believes that Voter Fraud happens often so these Voter Ids could change the outcome of an