Elvira Shaw, 92, of Colonial Heights was among those who rallied against the photo identification legislation Tuesday on Capitol Square.
League of Women Voters member Mary Crutchfield rallied Tuesday in Richmond’s Capitol Square against the bill that would require voters to present photo identification before filling out a ballot.
The Virginia House of Delegates is expected to vote today on two proposals, sponsored by Sen. Mark D. Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, that would tighten voter ID laws and possibly grant the commonwealth access to a federal database to verify citizenship status of registered voters.
The more controversial measure, Senate Bill 1256, would require voters to present photo ID at the polls and mandate registrar’s offices to provide free photo identification to voters who do not have it.
If the measure passes, Virginia could join the few states that already have strict photo ID laws. If Gov. Bob McDonnell signs the bill, the U.S. Department of Justice also would have to sign off on the legislation due to Virginia’s history of racial discrimination.
On Tuesday evening, around 100 people gathered on Capitol Square for a final push against the photo ID bill. Elvira Shaw, a 92-year-old Colonial Heights resident who served on the city’s electoral board for 50 years, said photo ID is not needed to vote. “In all my years on the board, we’ve never had a problem,” she said.
Sen. Mark R. Herring, D-Loudoun, said in a news conference Monday that the GOP wants to make it harder for the elderly, poor and minorities to vote. “Just as the 2012 General Assembly session became known for the war on women, the 2013 session could easily be known as the war on voters,” Herring said.
But Del. Mark L. Cole, R-Spotsylvania, chairman of the House Privileges and Elections Committee, called the measure “another chance to ensure that people have confidence in our elections.”
Cole said Obenshain’s bill would help prevent voter fraud and might even increase the number of minority votes. “Other states that have photo ID laws did not have any widespread problems,” he said, alleging that the proposal’s opponents “are just throwing up red herrings because they don’t like the bill.”
Obenshain is seeking the Republican nomination for attorney general. Herring is running for the Democratic nomination.
According to the Virginia Department of Planning and Budget, an information campaign for the photo ID bill would cost $200,000 per year for four years. The cost of new equipment would be $166,250 as a one-time expense, and new voter IDs would cost $3 per card, mailing included.
But the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, a liberal think tank, estimates that providing photo IDs to all Virginia voters might cost up to $22 million.
On Tuesday, the House advanced a proposal that does not mandate photo ID for voting but would limit forms of ID that voters can show at the polls. House Bill 1337, sponsored by Cole, passed by a 64-26 vote.
Another Obenshain proposal, Senate Bill 1077, also has Democrats concerned and is scheduled to be voted on today.
The bill would authorize the State Board of Elections to apply to participate in the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, which is operated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
If Virginia participates in this program, the elections board would use the database to verify that voters listed in the Virginia voter registration system are U.S. citizens — a purpose that SAVE was not designed for.
Opponents of Senate Bill 1077 worry that Virginia would use records of the Department of Motor Vehicles to identify registered voters who were noncitizens when they obtained drivers licenses, and then match those records against the SAVE database.
“The problem is that most naturalized citizens typically receive their license when they are legal immigrants before becoming citizens and before registering to vote,” said Del. Alfonso H. Lopez, D-Arlington. “Under this bill, naturalized citizens would appear to just be legal immigrants in the system, which would flag them to remove them from the voter rolls,” he said. Noncitizen residents are not allowed to vote in federal elections.
Lopez also said the cost to pull a single file from SAVE would be 50 cents.
Cole brushed off these concerns. “If the process finds somebody on the voter list that they think might not be a citizen, a letter will be sent to this individual and they will be able to contact the registrar and clear up any confusion about that,” he said.
Cole said there are major problems with the Virginia voter registration list that need to be addressed. “This bill is just another small step to clean up the list,” he said.
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GENERAL ASSEMBLY COVERAGE: Follow the latest news and updates from the 2013 session of Virginia's General Assembly.
