Missouri Photo ID Bill Dies Under Pressure Some 230,000 Voters Stood to be Disenfranchised
Newsletter Volume 4 Issue 2
August 27, 2009
A Missouri bill, HJR9, that would initiate the process of amending the state constitution to require voters to present state-issued photo ID at the polls died in the final days of the state’s 2009 legislative session in May following tough resistance from Advancement Project and its coalition partners.
Advancement Project attorney, Denise Lieberman, testified about the onerous bill before the legislature, issued opinions about its lack of constitutionality, drafted editorials that were published in Missouri papers, and served as a spokesperson for Advancement Project’s local partner, the Missourians for Fair Elections Coalition. The effort involved an intense advocacy campaign opposing the bill.
“Every time this resolution was put on the calendar in committee, and when it passed out of committee, we would put news about it at www.mofairelections.org, get people to go down and testify and flood legislators with calls,” said Denise Lieberman, the Missouri-based voter protection attorney for Advancement Project. “We kept up the pressure to the very last day of the legislative session until the bill died.”
HJR 9 sought to change the state’s constitution to require voters to show specific state-issued photo ID before being allowed to cast a ballot. The proposal was the third attempt by legislators in three years to impose strict photo-ID laws in Missouri. Although substantial support for the bill existed among lawmakers, Advancement Project and its coalition partners challenged the bill for its potential to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of eligible voters in Missouri, especially minorities, the poor and voters with disabilities. In the final days, the pressure helped prevent the measure, which had passed out of committee, from reaching a floor vote.
“It was expected to pass easily when it was first drafted. So without the pressure, it would’ve easily gone to a vote and passed,” Lieberman said.
Advancement Project and its partners in the Missourians for Fair Elections Coalition coordinated strategic opposition to HJR 9 from the moment it was introduced, generating media interest and nearly 6,000 phone calls to legislators from voters across the state.
Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, who opposed the bill, concluded that HJR9 could disenfranchise up to 230,000 registered Missouri voters who do not possess any of the forms of photo ID required by the bill, including 70,000 low-income voters; 50,000 without a high school diploma; 50,000 elderly; and 40,000 African Americans.
HJR9 would have disenfranchised: college students in Missouri who had out-of-state driver’s licenses; African-American voters who were born in the rural south in an era when birth certificates were not being issued to them; senior citizens whose driver’s licenses had expired; displaced Katrina survivors whose records were destroyed in the hurricane, and disabled people unable to provide a consistent signature.
Although HJR 9 purported to allow voters to secure a photo ID at no expense, it may be difficult and costly to pay the fees needed to obtain the source documents necessary to obtain the required ID. Fees to obtain lost birth certificates range from $30 to $60, which is a lot of money for people with low-incomes. And for some voters, it would be impossible to obtain the required documents.
“If you are remarried, don’t have a driver’s license and your current name is different from your given name, you would have had to show your marriage certificate and obtain a copy of your divorce decree to prove your identity—even though you are eligible and registered and there’s no question about your eligibility,” said Lieberman. “No eligible voter should be denied the right to vote because government bureaucracy cannot find a copy of their birth certificate.”
Although the legislators who proposed the bill claim photo ID laws would protect against fraud, Lieberman said there has not been one documented case of voter impersonation fraud in Missouri. Furthermore, Missouri law already requires voters to present ID at the polls on Election Day.
The effort to pass photo ID laws has been a national problem for those concerned about voting rights. “These bills are unnecessary and dangerous because they stand to disenfranchise the most vulnerable citizens in our communities,” Lieberman said. “These voters shouldn’t be relegated to second-class citizenship. The right to vote belongs to all eligible voters, not just those with a state ID.”
The Missouri Supreme Court, in assessing the state’s previous attempt to implement photo ID in 2006, concluded that such a law was unconstitutional in part because it would impose a “a heavy and substantial burden on Missourians’ free exercise of the right of suffrage.”
