On a party-line vote of 20-17, the Senate today approved Del. Jeff Campbell’s (R – Marion) HB 1318, a bill requiring voters who apply for mail-in absentee ballots to submit copies of a photo ID. Obviously, election administrators never see these voters, meaning that they have no face to which they can usefully compare a photo ID.
Said Sen. Jennifer Wexton (D – Loudoun), “Registrars don’t know what absentee voters look like; forcing them to present a photo ID does nothing to protect the integrity of our elections. All this bill does is to raise a needless barrier that makes voting harder. Once again, we’ve moved to silence voices that deserve to be heard, and I am deeply disappointed.”
Said Sen. John Edwards (D – Roanoke), “This requirement on an absentee ballot to have a photo ID serves absolutely no useful function at all other than to burden people who want to get an absentee ballot. […] The individual is not showing up personally before the registrar, and so it does no useful function. So you’re getting a photograph, but you have nothing to compare it with — because the registrar doesn’t have photographs.”
BACKGROUND: Photo ID laws (of any kind) have the potential to disenfranchise thousands of Virginians. Last September, the State Board of Elections found that more than 198,000 active Virginia voters lack a DMV-issued photo ID; many others lack easy access to a photocopy machine — which, asSen. Jill Vogel (R – Fauquier) admitted on the floor, this bill would effectively require.
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