Reply 2

Voter ID laws in Texas have been the topic of many controversial conversations, even more recently within my circle of friends.  My opinions and beliefs often vary from that of my close peers because 50% of them follow a Republican, more conservative school of thought in contrast with my more liberal belief system.  My thoughts regarding the need for strict voter ID laws are binary and complicated at least, because while I believe voters should be required to provide an official form of identification to vote, I also believe those laws would be burdensome and discriminatory to various racial and ethnic  groups.  I believe that while voter fraud doesn’t exist on a large scale, there has been evidence of fraud in smaller numbers.  According to a study from the ACLU, since 2000, fraud occurring at physical voting locations are “vanishingly rare” and found less than fifty instances where voters were pretending to be someone else.  Furthermore, the ACLU stated that some of those incidents were the direct result of an “honest mistake” by the election worker or the voter themselves.  Their overall opinion is that the requirement to show an ID at the poll is a “solution in search of a problem” (Oppose Voter ID Legislation – Fact Sheet).