Whether or not voter fraud happens or voter ID necessary or unjust, it’s fairly easy to see who has an invested interest in the issue: politicians.

Even if voter fraud is nonexistent or even if voter ID laws don’t disenfranchise anyone, politicians still have much to gain from the conflict itself. Both political parties gain powerful (if baseless arguments) for attacking each other and gaining support as a result of those attacks. Republicans get to accuse Democrats of fraud and corruption while Democrats get to repeat their familiar refrain that only racists vote republican. The truth doesn’t matter here: all that matters is the conflict itself. Politicians generally leap at any chance to smear their opponents while increasing their support base.

This doesn’t even to take into consideration how both parties benefit from this conflict simply because it distracts citizens from true corruption in the voting system. If they can keep the population divided, with them accusing each other of racism or fraud respectively, then the population can never unite to demand true election reform. The people will never seek to end true practices of corruption that actually have an effect on voting, such as gerrymandering, participation of independents, or campaign financing. Instead, we’ll waste our time in a needless racial conflict, benefiting nobody but the scum we vote for.

Of course, if there actually is voter fraud or if voter ID laws actually disenfranchise people, then voters have an additional interest in the issue, beyond being blinded from real corruption by politicians. If there is enough voter fraud to sway elections, then voters are unfairly being disenfranchised. If there is no voter fraud, and these laws are just racist, then other voters are being disenfranchised. This brings up the obvious question of whether or not either of these issues even exists.

This whole fight has become so polarized that it comes as no surprised that the evidence (or lack thereof) is equally partisan . News sources and researchers on the left say there is no documented cases of voter fraud. The Brennan Center calls voter fraud a myth, Mother Jones says UFO’s are more common, Slate claims it occurs at an inconsequential rate, and New America says existent fraud is the result of mistakes that can’t be prevented with voter IDs.   While all this evidence seems conclusive, it is important to pay attention to what these sources mean by voter fraud. The only type of voter fraud they are addressing is impersonation, which is rather low. When they do address it, of course, they accept that the only existing fraud is that which has been reported, with no consideration that it might be higher. Regardless, impersonation, the riskiest form of voter fraud, is not the only type in existence.

When this is taken into consideration, the evidence for voter fraud is abundant, and actually less partisan than the arguments saying it doesn’t exist. There are of course partisan anecdotes demonstrating the existence of fraud, such as a report from the Blaze documenting how a young man was given Attorney General Eric Holder’s ballot or an article from the National Review demonstrating how easy it is to commit voter fraud in New York City.  Voter fraud, however, is much more common even than these reports note, since most voter fraud exists on an institutional level, rather than on the personal level that might motivate someone to commit voter impersonation. The Pew Charitable Trusts discovered that 24 million (1 in 8) voter registrations are either invalid or notably inaccurate.

In addition, their report found that 1.8 million deceased are still registered voters while 2.75 million people are registered in multiple states.  Pointing out that fraud is not apparent unless you dig for it, independent investigators and action groups have started uncovering the fraud and its effects as described in the Pew report. In Maryland, for example, Truethevote investigated only 1% of voter registrations in one county and found multiple examples of persistent fraud based on the abuse of absentee ballots and deceased who are still registered.  In Indiana, the same organization in conjunction with Judicial Watch discovered that 12 counties have more registered voters than people.

As should be apparent by now, the difference between the evidence for voter fraud and against it is that one side is only looking at reported cases, while the other is actively looking for it. Indeed, evidence points to the fact that even for officially reported cases of voter fraud, they rarely undergo investigation. In New York, the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption discovered that the Board of Elections simply ignores most reports of fraud.  The attempt to conceal voter corruption and ameliorate the problems in voting records uncovered by the Pew report is thorough and institutional. Both the state and a number of private organizations actively work to prevent the investigation of fraud and the gathering of evidence to show it exists.

For example, when Election Integrity Maryland asked the state for records to discover how many dead voters remained on their election rolls, the ACLU blocked the request.  When Kentucky, South Carolina, and Tennessee compared voter rolls to eliminate multiple registrations, ACORN blocked the purges in court saying a voter could only be removed from rolls if they personally requested it, evidence of multiple registrations being insufficient.  These facts seem to support the opinion that voter fraud exists. Those who say it does not tend to rely on the absence of official cases combating voter fraud, while the investigations of those arguing voter fraud exists show the fraud is there: it’s just ignored. USAToday pointed out this difference in research, remarking that there are few reported cases of fraud because it simply is not being reported.

Voter fraud may exist, but that does not mean voter ID laws are the answer. Ever since voter ID laws started being proposed, opponents of such laws have pointed out through extensive research that they could impose obstacles to voting for minorities, the young, and the old. It’s important to note at this point that voting laws are not inherently racist. It is not some phenomenon peculiar to the US. Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, and Canada all have voter ID laws. In addition, most of South America and Africa have such laws as well. The existence of these laws across the world demonstrates their acceptance as legitimate yet they also show ID laws can be corrupt and used to affect the outcome of elections.

According to a report from the Carter Center, such laws have been used in Argentina, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and rural areas of Mexico to fix elections and suppress voters.  However, the same report pointed out that ID laws have worked smoothly in Panama, Chile, and most of Mexico, with conditions improving in Peru. This evidence indicates that voter ID laws can and do work smoothly with little or no disenfranchisement. Of course, a key factor in most of these voter ID laws is the implementation of national ID systems. Nobody has a problem acquiring a photo ID because they are mandatory.

The US obviously does not have a national ID and indeed such a system would be repugnant to the very people who want voter ID laws. Yet, common sense would imply that most people would have some sort of photo identification. After all you need photo ID to buy alcohol, cigarettes, cough medicine, guns, vehicles, boats, and houses. In most states, you also need one to apply for Medicare/Medicaid, welfare, foods stamps, unemployment benefits, jobs, public housing, building permits, or to adopt a pet.  That someone could go through their entire life without going to the DMV and paying $10 for a photo ID card is difficult to understand.  One would think that everyone would be encouraged to get one so at the very least they could enjoy the multifarious opportunities available to someone who has one.

Of course, this is not necessarily the case, as the Brennan Center pointed out in another 2012 report.  They estimated that there are 3.2 million people in the US without photo identification. And for many, such as the elderly, young minorities, the argument goes, getting photo identification could be very difficult if not impossible all together. The obstacles for many to attaining an ID include travel costs, distance, or the lack of legitimate documents necessary for receiving an ID. It then follows logically from this evidence that voter ID laws will restrict voter turnout. The Institute of Government and Public Affairs from the University of Illinois estimated a 2 percent reduction in the turnout of effected voters.

However, researchers are not entirely in agreement on this issue. A study from the American University Center for Democracy and Election Management estimated, like the Brennan Center study, that 11 percent of the US didn’t possess photo IDs.  They conducted a survey of 2000 registered voters in Maryland, Indiana, and Mississippi to determine the percentage of registered voters who lacked a photo ID. The study showed that 11 percent was a significant overestimate with only 1.2 percent of voters actually lacking an ID. They did discover that those who didn’t have an ID were the same people predicted as not having one by ID law opponents: namely, they were female, African American, and Democrat. However, they concluded from the rest of their research that voter ID laws would not affect turnout significantly. In fact, they agreed with my position that the primary interests in this conflict resided with politicians, not with voters.

It is not necessary to choose between the American University or Brennan studies as the most recent information on the subject demonstrates just how little of an effect voter ID laws actually have. A University of Missouri study shows that ID laws in Indiana had little effect on voter turnout.  The same thing happened in both Texas and Georgia as well: voter ID laws, rather than suppressing the vote, actually saw an increase in minority turnout.

This turnout actually corresponds to minority approval of such laws. For example, according to the Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project, 71 percent of Latino registered voters support voter ID laws, while 97 percent are confident they have the necessary ID to vote.  The Brennan Center, despite arguing in some reports that voter ID’s would suppress minority voting, published another study in 2007 that demonstrated that voter ID laws “do not meaningfully affect voter turnout”.  At this point, it should be apparent that voter ID laws, unlike expectations of opponents, have no negative effect on minority populations.

Of course, in implementation of voter ID laws, it is important to remember what’s happening in South America and realize that such laws do hold the potential for discrimination and disenfranchisement. The question here has shifted from “Do voter ID laws disenfranchise?” to “What is the best way to ensure fair elections?” When we talk about voter ID laws, we must necessarily consider the subject of national ID’s and the possibility of following such examples as Germany and Chile.

In 2005, the Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by former president Jimmy Carter and former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, looked to these international examples in their appeal for the implementation of voter IDs as part of their five-pillar plan to reform the election process.  In this report, they argued that voter IDs must be connected with voter registration. However, they also pointed out that voter IDs alone are not sufficient to ensure fair elections. The American University study I cited above agrees: while voter ID laws don’t affect turnout, the very process of voting is full of confusion, inefficiency, and dishonesty.

This brings me full circle to my original theory on who has an invested interest in this discussion. The evidence I presented demonstrates that voter fraud and subsequent disenfranchisement does exist. We as voters should be concerned about fair elections and in that process we should avoid immediately dismissing something like voter ID laws. At the same time, we should not place all our hope in one policy to eliminate corruption. The key is to reject the entire conflict on the basis that, for voters, it is entirely pointless.

It is an argument created by power-hungry politicians who seek to exploit the fears of their voters and create such a level of hatred as to ever prevent a concerted effort to end voting corruption. As long as the voters constantly suspect each other of either racism or fraud, then the politicians can continue to benefit from a deeply flawed election system. Voter ID laws are only part of the solution and will only be effective when used in tandem with other reforms. At the same time, we must remain focused on our common goal of fair elections and recognize every effort must be made in the implementation of these laws to eradicate any possible disenfranchisement of minorities, however insignificant and inconsequential.