Voter ID bill sinks

Burdensome HB 153 threatened voting rights

Requiring Wyoming voters to show a current, government-certified photo identification card when they come to the polls would send the state’s nation-leading turnout numbers “down the tubes,” a top state elections official told a House committee Thursday.

The testimony of Peggy Nighswonger, elections director from the Secretary of State’s Office, combined with objections from the Wyoming County Clerks’ Association, several individual clerks, the ACLU, the League of Women Voters, and the ESPC convinced the House Corporations Committee to vote 3-6 against sending the bill to the House floor.

“I haven’t taken a beating like that in a long time,” primary sponsor Rep. Steve Harshman said as the meeting broke up.

Rep. Harshman’s bill, HB 153 Vote Identification, imposed significant barriers to voters in an effort to prevent voter fraud. It was modeled closely after an Indiana law that recently survived a challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court, Rep. Harshman told the committee.

But no one knows of any voter fraud in Wyoming. Uinta County Clerk Lynne Fox, representing the county clerks association, said the group discussed the matter during its meeting this week. Of the19 counties represented at the meeting, not one clerk could recall any attempt by someone to vote fraudulently, Ms. Fox said.

Rare as mortal lightning strikes


The Brennan Center for Justice has found that in-person voter fraud is “exceedingly rare.”

“Legitimate cases of fraud that could be addressed by a photo ID requirement are proven to occur approximately as often as Americans are struck and killed by lightning,” the center’s director Michael Waldman has written.

The ESPC cited this report to support our argument that the Voter ID bill was a solution seeking a problem.

Perhaps the most egregious aspect of the bill was its requirement that people voting for the first time in a federal election not only would have to show a qualifying photo ID, but would have to show poll judges “a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, government check or other government document which shows his name and address.”

Parents of children reaching voting age know how difficult it is to instill good voting habits. It’s not easy for them to get through the registration process and to the polls, let alone remember to bring a photo ID and supporting documentation. Many students and other young adults would have trouble producing the utility bills or check stubs, since they share households, occupy rentals that may or may not cover utilities, and rarely, if ever, make a copy of a paycheck, and move frequently. Even their driver’s license is unlikely to show their current address.

Jennifer Horvath of the American Civil Liberties Union noted that many types of student, tribal and federal photo IDs do not have an expiration date, as required by HB 153, so they would not meet the letter of the proposed law.

Confronted at the polls with that problem, the bill would have allowed voters to cast a provisional ballot, then somehow get to the county clerk’s office with adequate proof of identity by the close of business the following day -- not an easy task for many people who live in counties where the county seat may be more than 75 miles from their polling place.

“It’s a question of whether you can vote on a particular day,” Ms. Horvath said.

Obtaining the required types of ID would force poor people and others to bear the costs of obtaining a passport or getting a driver’s license, she added.

Voters can get an ID from the state for $10, and the bill outlined situations under which the fee could be waived. That did not satisfy Rep. Mary Hales of Casper.

“You are getting awfully close to a poll tax,” she said.

Ms. Fox noted the measure would impose heavy burdens on poll judges. The bill exempted indigents and voters who have a religious objection to being photographed. Poll workers would have to make those determinations.

But they are busy enough with same-day registration, which requires “absolutely correct” recording of information by the judges.

“It’s a problem,” she said.

Breaks in two on way to bottom

Worse, both Ms. Fox and Ms. Nighswonger noted, was the potential that the documentation standards impose a residency requirement. “That, in effect, undoes election day registration,” Fox said.

Ms. Nighswonger explained that Wyoming’s same-day registration law enabled it to achieve a waiver exempting it from many of the federal requirements in the federal Help America Vote Act. Indiana did not have that waiver, she said.

Rep. Harshman said he did not want to do away with same-day registration and noted he had asked the secretary of state if he had problems with the bill.

“I went to the guy in charge,” he said, and did not hear this objection.

In the end, Reps. Kermit Brown of Laramie and David Miller of Riverton were joined by Chairman Pete Illoway as the only votes for the bill.

Reps. Bernadine Craft, Rock Springs, Ross Diercks, Lusk, Tom Lubnau, Gillette, Mary Hales, Tim Stubson, Casper, and Dan Zwonitzer, Cheyenne, voted against the measure.

Close the PAC loophole

Rep. Throne bill limits contributions by PACs

A campaign finance bill that closes the loophole in state law that allows political action committees (PACs) to completely dominate local elections passed the House Corporations Committee Tuesday.

Rep. Mary Throne’s bill proposed limiting PAC contributions to $1,000 per election. The committee amended it to allow PACs to contribute $3,000 per election.

The ESPC supports the measure. State law presently imposes no limits on PAC contributions. That loophole in finance law was exploited in the 2006 campaign by a political action committee set up in Natrona County.

In 2006, the Committee to Elect Natrona County Candidates received $11,757.48 from a single contributor. The PAC subsequently contributed $11,190.77 to a candidate for Natrona County Commission during and after the 2006 general election campaign. The actions of the committee were duly reported in campaign reports filed in the Natrona County Clerk’s Office by the PAC and the county commission candidate.

We contend the action violated the spirit of state campaign finance law, which seeks to limit the ability of a wealthy few to dominate state and local elections. The $3,000 limit will reduce the ability of a PAC to dominate relatively low-cost contest for local and legislative offices.

A reporting clause in Rep. Throne’s bill requires all candidates to report any contribution of $500 or more made in the last days of an election campaign within 24 hours. The wording on this requirement is tricky.

State law, the bill notes, says this (lines of text are numbered in bills – this is excerpted from Page 4 of HB 117):

12 (i) Every candidate shall file a fully itemized
13 statement of receipts at least seven (7) days before any
14 primary, general or special election with information
15 required by this subsection current to any day from the
16 eighth day up to the fourteenth day before the election.

Rep. Throne proposed this reporting requirement:

17 Any additional receipts of five hundred dollars ($500.00)
18 or more received from any one (1) contributor, other than
19 the candidate or the candidate's immediate family, shall be
20 reported not later than the close of the following business
21 day;

The committee approved two amendments aimed at clarifying the reporting requirement. Together, those amendments insert the following words on line 17, before the word “Any”:

“After the date the fully itemized statement of receipts is due, and prior to or on the date of the election,” …

I know this is an exhaustive look at legislating details. But if you’ve read this far, you may have another question. Is it possible to evade the 24-hour reporting requirements on contributions made during the 14th to the 8th day prior to the election? What if those contributions are not listed in the report that must be submitted by the 7th day before the election?

Party limits? Pre-election reporting for PACs?

It’s one step at a time with campaign finance reform. More steps lie ahead. State law presently does not limit contributions by political parties. We should look at the reasoning for the lack of a limit.

Imposing similar pre-election reporting requirements on PACs would continue to build on the legislature’s effort to make the campaign financing process more transparent. The public deserves to know who is funding PACs during the last two weeks of campaigning.

House Bill 117 could be amended to instruct PACs to list both receipts and contributor names seven days before an election. Similarly, PACs could be required to file daily reports of large receipts and of contributions made to candidates in the last 14 days of an election.

Here’s another consideration. Campaign finance guru Robert Stern of the Center for Governmental Studies in L.A. suggests imposing individual limits on contributions to PACs. Wyoming law limits individuals to total contributions of $25,000 per election to individual candidates. But there does not appear to be any limit on individual contributions to PACs.