Brennan Center for Justice

In the past, we've analyzed press reports on alleged
instances of voter fraud, and found reason to
question some of the conclusions. In a post moments ago, we questioned the Supreme
Court's devotion to accurate factual reporting, in a decision that otherwise
accurately characterized flawed press reports. And now, we come full circle,
finding factual inaccuracies in the press around the Supreme Court's decision
itself. Whew.

Most of the damage is confined to editorials and columnists—and, fortunately, some pieces are far more careful than others. Still, there
are some opinions floating around that are dangerously unhinged from fact.

Let's start with the most common myths and misstatements. 

An editorial
repeats the misconception that Indiana
is the norm: "in 20 states, some form of photo identification is necessary
before voting." Another report
claims that "about 25 states" have laws like Indiana's. Wrong. The real number is 3: Indiana,
Georgia, and Florida—and in Florida,
your ballot will still count even if you don't have photo ID. The photo ID
states are the real outliers here.

A columnist
parrots the misconception that photo ID is required for all sorts of daily
activities: "Here are just a few activities that require identification:
alcohol and tobacco purchases, boarding an airline, entrance to a casino,
senior discounts at retail stores, check cashing, passport purchase, border
crossings, prescription purchases, and, in some instances, the use of a credit
card to make a retail purchase." Not if
he's talking about photo ID, they don't. Giving credit for the accurate
responses (border crossings, some credit card purchases), and a very generous
half-credit for the responses that are only accurate some of the time (alcohol
and tobacco, casino, senior discounts, check cashing, prescription purchases),
he ends up with a 50%. In my school, that got an F.

A report
furthers the misconception that "lawyers challenging the law didn't produce a
single voter injured by it." Not true.
In part because the law was challenged before
it went into effect, there was no testimony in the official record from voters who
had already been prevented from
voting. But there was evidence of several voters without valid ID who would
have difficulty obtaining that ID.  And
since the law went into effect, papers
submitted to the Supreme Court shows that in one county alone, dozens of voters
in the 2007 off-year municipal election cast ballots that could not be counted
solely because of the photo ID law.

And then there's Hans von Spakovsky. You can't blame the reporting
here: they just quote him. But his assertion that
the Crawford decision "confirms the
validity of photo ID laws" is as wrong as his claim that the decision
vindicates the DOJ for approving Georgia's 2005 ID law. The Court
case didn't say photo ID laws were OK: it said that there wasn't enough
evidence in this particular case—which was brought before the law ever went
into effect—to strike the law down. While it may now be harder to get the
proof necessary, future ID laws that disenfranchise vulnerable populations are
as constitutionally suspect as they ever were.

And the Court certainly
didn't say that the DOJ was right to approve Georgia's law in 2005. Crawford addressed an Indiana
law under the Constitution; the DOJ addressed a Georgia law under the Voting Rights
Act. Different laws, different standards, different analysis. The only
similarity is that both results were wrong.