Voter ID laws are an ongoing battle, muddling the political playing field in states across the country. Currently, 35 states have Voter ID laws that require voters to show some form of identification at the polls. According to New York State’s Election Law, however, a voter need only present a signature in order to cast a ballot.
Supporters of Voter ID laws feel that increasing requirements for identification will increase public confidence in the election process and prevent in-person voter fraud. Opponents claim there is little fraud and that the requirement of voters to obtain identification restricts participation, requires excessive expenses and travel to obtain documents, and imposes unnecessary costs and administrative burdens on elections administrators. They further claim Voter ID laws limit voting by lower income, disabled, and minority voters.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, if a voter fails to show the ID that is asked for by law, states provide alternatives. These laws fit two categories: non-strict and strict.
Non-strict states have rules that allow at least some voters without acceptable identification to have an option to cast a ballot that will be counted, without further action on the part of the voter. This could be a poll worker vouching for the voter or voters being able to cast a vote on a provisional ballot that will be counted after the close of election day, upon signature check or verification. New Hampshire has a policy that officials send a letter to anyone who signed an affidavit, who then confirm their residency by returning the mailing.
In strict states, voters without acceptable identification must vote on a provisional ballot and take additional steps after Election Day for it to be counted. For instance, the voter may be required to return to an election office within a few days after the election and present an acceptable ID to have the provisional ballot counted. If the voter does not come back to show ID, the provisional ballot is not counted.
Suffolk County Elections Commissioner Nick LaLota (R-Babylon) pictured, recently testified before the New York State Senate Elections Committee on the importance of passing voter identification legislation to safeguard future elections from those who try to perpetrate voter fraud.
LaLota, a graduate of Annapolis and Hofstra Law, has been a Suffolk County Elections Commissioner since 2015. He was invited, along with other elections officials and experts throughout New York State, to provide testimony to the Senate’s Elections Committee on how to improve New York’s elections process.
“Legislation recently advanced by this committee has focused on making voting easier. In the 2022 legislative session, I hope you will put forth legislation that makes it harder to cheat. In Suffolk County, despite having few resources to identify election fraud, my administration has endured numerous attempts to cheat our election system,” LaLota told the committee.
Rigid safeguards are needed to prevent fraud, misuse, and absentee ballot fraud. Lalota commended the committee on making New York one of the 33 states to have Early Voting.
In 2019, the NYS Senate Elections Committee introduced early voting, giving New Yorkers the opportunity to avoid lines at local polling stations.
In the fall of 2020, based on LaLota’s referral, the Suffolk County District Attorney arrested a Suffolk man for signing and submitting not just one, but two absentee ballots for his deceased mother. LaLota’s Administration was able to identify this fraud by impersonation since it had previously received authenticated information that the man’s mother died.
”My Administration was able to identify this fraud by impersonation since we had previously received authenticated information that the mother died. The system worked and if those sorts of facts were to repeat themselves, a ballot would not be issued, and my Administration would alert Law Enforcement regarding the attempt to defraud our election. But we need this committee’s help providing legislation or resources with absentee ballot requests coming from people other than the voter themselves when the voter isn’t known to be deceased. As it stands right now, the Suffolk Board is virtually defenseless against someone making an absentee request for a relative who is away– such as at a nursing home or college,” said LaLota.
In a separate matter, in mid-September LaLota referred to the District Attorney the name of a Suffolk County voter who is registered in both New York (Suffolk County) and voted in the November 2014 and 2018 elections in both states.
“Apparently a motivated Florida elections worker, after recognizing that the individual had his Florida absentee ballot sent to New York every year for about 10 years, thought to check if the individual was also registered in New York. Upon discovering the individual was also registered in New York, the Florida County Board of Elections contacted the Suffolk Board to alert us to the individual being registered in two states,” explained LaLota. “Then, my Administration obtained the Florida voting record of the individual, compared it to their New York voting record and identified the aforementioned double voting.”
Commissioner LaLota direc-ted the committee that what is greatly needed is to be able to identify other voters who are registered in two states and voting in two states, and that the Board of Elections should not have to rely on ad hoc processes to do so. He warned the committee not to dismiss these allegations as anecdotal or statistically irrelevant.
“Suffolk County is amidst doing its diligence trying to understand a list of 850 Suffolk voters: (1) for whom the Suffolk Board received a 2020 General Election absentee ballot; (2) whose oath envelope signature did not match the voter’s signatures the Board has on file; and (3) where the purported voter did not subsequently respond to the Board’s formal “cure” letter pointing out the signature discrepancy. I am confident that as more work is done, we will uncover a worrisome number of attempts at fraud by impersonation,” said Lalota.
LaLota asked the committee to make New York the 36th state to have a Voter ID law. Contrary to claims of dissenters, the Republican Commissioner of the Suffolk County Board of Elections told the committee, “Doing so would also bring much-needed confidence to our elections and, practically speaking, voter ID would make the check-in process significantly smoother for our inspectors and voters.”
The ACLU claims states incur sizeable costs when implementing voter ID laws, including the cost of educating the public, training poll workers, and providing IDs to voters. With the vast amount of waste on a state level, of taxpayers’ dollars, the assurance that our elections are fair and secure would be worth the costs in the long run. As suggested by LaLota, New York Law should provide the necessary resources to ensure all indigent voters in New York are given cost-free access to government identifications. Another suggestion to limit voter fraud would be to follow the precedents of rulings of the United States Supreme Court and adopt policies of the aforementioned strict states by providing provisional ballots for voters who still could not obtain the required identification.
