The Damaged Brand of the GOP

By Stephen A. Nuño.

Despite the ruling by the US Supreme Court that the Indiana Voter ID law was constitutional, an Indiana appellate court recently struck down the state law requiring voters to show identification.

The ruling argues that the Indiana Constitution’s guarantee to equal protection is more expansive than the 14th Amendment. The court states that the Voter ID laws pose more stringent identification requirements on in-person voters than absentee voters, and if the intent was to reduce voter fraud, the law should be doing the exact opposite. I agree.

In a previous article, “Constructing Republicanos,” I stated that the GOP brand is very damaged in the eyes of Latinos. I listed a few areas in which the GOP could improve their outreach to Latinos while not violating their core principles. One of those areas was the creation of public policy that demonstrated as much empathy for “Jose the Plumber” as the GOP does for Joe the Plumber.

One policy area the GOP could start with is on the issue of voter identification laws. The GOP argues that our voting system should be free from fraud. After the 2000 Presidential Election, there was a push to create greater confidence in the integrity of our elections and the recent problems with registration fraud among both parties demonstrate that something must be done to ensure that everyone voting is in fact eligible to vote.

This problem, however, has been framed around the immigration debate. The push for laws requiring certain types of identification in order to vote is placed within a mythology that hordes of illegal aliens line up at the polling booths to cast votes for Democrats. This is absurd. While there is plenty of evidence of registration fraud, voter fraud is virtually nonexistent. One reason for the confusion is that registration fraud is often conveniently conflated to mean voter fraud, when they are two separate legal issues. Stuffing ballot boxes or mailing a large number of ballots under fake names are far more economical methods of stealing an election than rounding up illegal aliens who do not even speak English to show up in person and cast an illegal ballot. Picturing this scenario in reality is even comical. Instead, the economical way of stealing an election should focus our attention on registration fraud and on mail-in ballots, yet the laws governing registration and mail-in ballots are relatively lax.

The political issue at hand is that these laws are being passed in increasingly “purple” states, such as Arizona, Georgia, Missouri and Indiana, and Republican legislators are trying to stop the bleeding. Voter identification laws, while a logical step in preventing voter fraud even if it is rare, are being politicized by Republicans. And not in a way that shows empathy towards Latinos. As mentioned above, fraud is much more likely to occur at the point of contact between the ballots and the officials counting the ballots or in mail-in ballots which can be easily forged in large numbers. The current identification laws do nothing to address these issues. Republicans are explicitly excluding absentee voters from these new voter identification laws. Why the calls for increasing the integrity of our electoral system while ignoring the most obvious holes in our system? Because absentee voters tend to vote more Republican since they are older, have higher levels of income, are not as mobile and they are more likely to be non-minority voters.

Increasing the cost of voting will disproportionately reduce the level of participation among the poor and minorities even if those costs are minimal. The GOP knows the impact these laws will have because not only do they exclude absentee voters, but for instance in Indiana, older folks who live in convalescent homes are also excluded. While I certainly understand the concern the GOP has for older voters, the same concern for poor minorities somehow is nowhere to be found.

The voter identification laws are different for different people, based on electoral advantage, and Latinos are being disproportionately hurt because of it. The current laws impose an undue burden on racial minorities, potentially having a negative impact on participation.

While I think its fine to require that everyone prove they are who they claim to be before casting a vote, I think nobody should be absolved from doing so, not just potential Republican constituencies. This inequity can be alleviated by simply imposing similar standards on absentee voters. But what are the odds of that?

The GOP is passing laws that are unsympathetic to the fact that Latinos who tend to be poorer and have fewer resources will be disproportionately impacted, all the while cloaking their rhetoric in a vague claim of electoral integrity when the reality is precisely the opposite.

If the GOP wants to show empathy for Latinos they can start by treating all voters with equal concern without falsely demonizing immigrants as too stupid to warrant entry into our country as “unskilled labor” yet somehow smart enough to coordinate a rogue political campaign.

Stephen A. Nuño, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Northern Arizona University. He can be reached at Stephen.Nuno@nau.edu

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