Wayne Hayes is intimately familiar with lists of registered voters. The Lawrence community activist just spent months collecting signatures of voters seeking to recall Mayor William Lantigua and checking them against the voter lists.
While the recall effort failed, what Hayes learned in the effort supports his other political passion: getting a Voter ID requirement on the 2012 ballot in Massachusetts.
Recall workers collected 4,366 of the necessary 5,232 signatures to recall Lantigua. After working on that effort, Hayes, a resident of the city's Mt. Vernon neighborhood, said he now believes more than 7,000 of the city's 35,359 voters are not U.S. citizens and are not legally entitled to vote.
"At least 20 percent of the registered voters are not citizens but they are still voting," Hayes told reporter Jill Harmacinski.
Duplicate voter names appear on the registered voters list, with birthdays just days apart from one another and names that are slightly different, he said.
"Just one letter is changed in the name. But the same person has duplicate ability to vote," Hayes said.
Voting is an essential right under a democratic form of government. But if the voting process is tainted by cheating, fraud or other electoral shenanigans, the public loses confidence in the legitimacy of its government.
That appearance of corruption — which has been sufficient reason for campaign finance reform backers to seek to limit political speech — ought to be enough to justify voter identification requirements.
No one is seeking to prohibit legitimate voters from voting. Voter ID is simply a requirement that people must be who they say they are when voting.
The statewide Voter ID initiative, if approved, would require residents to show government-issued photo identification at the polls every time they go to vote. Supporters need to gather the signatures of 69,000 signatures from registered voters by mid-November to put the referendum on the 2012 state ballot. Some 30 other states, including Rhode Island, have already approved some other form of ID requirement for voters.
Yet in Massachusetts, Democratic political leaders always have a reason ready at hand why Voter ID will not work.
Gov. Deval Patrick vows that he will not support any Voter ID initiative.
"I am not interested and will not sign anything that makes it harder to vote," he said.
When asked why he wouldn't sign such a proposal, Patrick responded, "because voting is a right and we need to encourage participation."
Patrick has it exactly backward. Voter ID is not about making it harder for eligible citizens to vote. It is about making it next to impossible for the ineligible to vote.
State Sen. Barry Finegold, D-Andover, frets about the cost. He cites the state of Indiana, where generating free IDs for voters would cost $10 million.
Please, Senator, have some perspective. The budget for Massachusetts is $30 billion — $10 million is just three ten-thousandths of that amount. That seems like a bargain to assure the integrity of state elections.
State Rep. David Torrisi, D-North Andover, was skeptical of the proposal. He wants to be sure there are appropriate safeguards in place to assure that no one is denied their right to vote. What safeguards are in place now to assure that the ineligible are not voting? None.
The integrity of our elections must be unquestionable. Once, it was. Voting was a simple, direct process. After registering in person at a municipal office, a citizen went to a polling place on the appointed day and cast his or her ballot.
Sadly, after years of tinkering with that once-simply process, that is no longer the case. Elections do not take place on "Election Day" but instead are smeared out over weeks with "early voting" and absentee ballots that are handed out willy-nilly. Integrity is an afterthought.
Voter ID will help restore integrity to our elections. People are required to present identification to purchase alcohol or cigarettes, cash checks, board airplanes, collect benefits, or participate in any number of other transactions. This is not considered hardship. There should be no hardship in also presenting an ID to vote.
The sanctity of our democratic system is worth this minimal effort.
