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♪ ♪ KATKO: Tonight, voter ID laws -- the case for and against.

We'll delve into the subject with Harvard's Kennedy School professor, Alexander Keyssar, in the center ring.

Then, David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, and Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center for Justice, will weigh in on the issue on the trapeze.

Then I'll give you My Take, and Bloomberg's Josh Wingrove will fill us in on what's happening next week in Washington.

So let's get started as we walk the tightrope.

♪ Voter ID laws: 36 states have them, and three-quarters of Americans say they're in favor of showing some form of ID at the polls.

But in 2020, nearly 29 million voting-age citizens did not have a current driver's license, which is the most common form of government-issued photo ID.

More than 7 million had no ID at all.

It's surprising.

After all, we show ID to board a plane, to buy alcohol, or even enroll in Medicare.

But for some Americans, fees and lengthy procedures create barriers to obtaining certified documents like ID.

And voting isn't like buying a six-pack of beer; it's a fundamental constitutional right, which means the burden is on the government to keep the ballot accessible to all Americans.

Supporters argue that voter ID laws modernize elections, deter bad actors, and build public confidence and for good reason: Voter fraud was once rampant in American elections throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

But opponents warn that strict ID rules can have a disproportionate impact on racial minorities and low-income voters.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, passed by President Lyndon Johnson and civil rights champions such as Martin Luther King Jr.

and Rosa Parks, banned tests or devices as prerequisites for voting.

The law also required states with histories of enacting voter suppression measures to seek federal preclearance before changing voting laws in their state.

This preclearance protection was struck down by the Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court ruling in 2013, which cleared the way for states to challenge voting rules without federal approval and reconsider legislation that had previously been blocked.

Proponents of voter ID point to widespread concerns of voter fraud stirred up by the 2000 and 2020 elections.

But research shows the kind of voter impersonation fraud an ID would prevent is extremely rare.

According to the Heritage Foundation's election fraud database, of the more than 1,600 cases of voter fraud over the past 43 years, only 34 involved voter impersonation at the polls while 348 involved fraudulent use of absentee ballots.

Numerous studies have consistently reflected that voter ID has virtually no effect on voter fraud, but there is also insufficient evidence to support that voter ID has any effect on voter turnout or election trust.

So, do voter ID laws strengthen the integrity of American elections?

Are they effective at stopping voter fraud?

And do they create an unnecessary barrier to vote?

Let's answer these questions and many more in the center ring.

♪ ♪ KATKO: Joining us now is professor of History and Social Policy at Harvard University, Alexander Keyssar.

Welcome, professor, and let's get right into it.

The development over time of voter ID laws is on everyone's minds.

So what's your perspective on voter ID laws?

Prof.

KEYSSAR: Well, my perspective on voter ID laws, I guess, is twofold.

On the one hand, I think it's very reasonable to require the presentation of some form of ID before voting.

I don't think that that's an irrational or repressive thing for a state or for our country to do.

Most countries do it.

On the other hand, the way in which voter ID laws are administered in the United States right now has the consequence of being discriminatory and making it difficult for people who don't have driver's licenses, to state it briefly, to vote.

KATKO: So, Professor, there is some history to this as well, of course.

How has that history of voting restrictions in the United States shaped our perceptions of these laws?

Prof.

KEYSSAR: Well, the history of voting restrictions is a little bit of an up-and-down story because early on, in the early Republic, voting was by voice or even by ballots.

People would show up in their neighborhoods, and there was no need to present any kind of document.

But people could be challenged by electoral judges saying that you don't really belong here.

It's in the late 19th century that you start getting formal voting registration laws, which required you to register in advance.

And then, as a sequel to that, the development of ID laws that required you to present some document, particularly if you lived in a city.

These were urban developments initially because of the realistic sense that in a city, not everybody was known to the election judges or to people around, and thus you had to present some form of ID.

But the ID laws that we have now-many of them are 20th-century laws and mid-20th-century laws.

KATKO: So what are some of the most common forms of voter fraud, and how often does it actually occur?

Prof.

KEYSSAR: Voter fraud is very rare in the United States.

There's been study after study, there have been charges again and again that voter fraud is massive.

It is a minuscule phenomenon.

Remember back to ancient days when George Bush Jr.

was president, and he instructed his U.S.

attorneys to go out and find more and more instances of voter fraud, and he even removed some U.S.

attorneys because they couldn't find it.

Voter fraud is not a serious issue in the United States.

KATKO: So now multiple states-- in fact, the majority of states now have some form of voter ID laws.

In states where there are no voter ID laws, what stops someone, for example, from walking to a polling place and representing themselves as another person or voting multiple times?

Prof.

KEYSSAR: Nothing stops them.

I live in such a state.

I walk into my polling place, and they ask me my name, and I tell them my name and address, and then I vote, and nobody asks me for anything.

There's no evidence, as far as I know, that Massachusetts has more voter fraud than any other place.

I mean, the voter fraud that has occurred in recent years has involved some voting by mail or some other issues, but not what is called in-person voter impersonation.

And that's what the ID laws are designed to prevent.

KATKO: So there's a difference between states that require IDs versus states that request them.

How do they differ?

Prof.

KEYSSAR: Well, if the state requests it, you don't have to show it, then there is no penalty, and you are, as a rule, permitted to vote even if you don't show ID.

In a few cases, I think those votes may be thought of as provisional ballots, that's to say they're not counted towards the final tallies until it's established that you are who you said you are.

But the issue, I think, or what has become an important issue and a political issue, is in those states which require ID --and again, from my perspective, that's not unreasonable, what kinds of IDs are permitted?

What kinds of IDs count?

That's where the potential for basically voter suppression can occur.

KATKO: Yeah, so I'm going to reiterate: have supporters of voter ID been able to demonstrate that there is a significant degree of voter fraud that a voter ID would possibly prevent?

Or is this just more of the narrative becoming the fact?

Prof.

KEYSSAR: It's certainly the latter.

There is, to my mind -- and I do study these things pretty carefully -- there's no demonstration that voter ID laws prevent fraud or have any particular impact on fraud.

Okay, so the argument that they make is, well, that's because you don't find the fraud because it's such effective fraud.

But that's hard to argue against.

KATKO: Now, of course, over the history of our country, African Americans after the Civil War were very negatively affected by all kinds of onerous election laws that made it very difficult for them to vote and essentially prevented them from voting.

And they included IDs.

But are there groups that are negatively affected by modern voter ID laws?

Is it still minorities and less affluent people, if any?

Prof.

KEYSSAR: Yes, I mean, it is minorities and less affluent people.

I think it's less affluent is actually the larger category.

I mean, in most states, if they require an ID, a driver's license will do it.

But then you ask who doesn't have driver's licenses, and the answer is the young and the elderly, and particularly the young and elderly who are at the poor end of the spectrum.

And that's who is prevented.

And then, you know, the question in a lot of places is, well, how easy or difficult would it be to go get an ID from the state?

And that varies from place to place.

KATKO: So why do you think there's an increased call for voter ID laws these days?

Prof.

KEYSSAR: I think that it's grounded maybe a certain percentage in the reasonable notion that if you have to present an ID to get on an airplane, you should present one to vote.

But I think it's also very much grounded in this deep suspicion that somewhere out there, people are cheating, and those people are "other," and they are poor, and they are minorities, and they are going to, you know, steal our elections.

I think it's grounded in an apprehension rather than any real grasp of the facts.

KATKO: Professor, as we noted earlier, three-quarters of Americans believe that voters should have some sort of ID.

How do we make it easy for them to get those IDs?

Prof.

KEYSSAR: Well, I think that what has to happen is that the responsibility for getting an ID has to become the responsibility of the state or the federal government, but voting is largely a state matter here - rather than the responsibility of the individual to go hunt one down if they don't have a driver's license.

There are systems that almost all countries use of having either national IDs or voting IDs, which are issued to people when they first become of voting age, and those IDs and their ID numbers stay with people for their lifetime.

It would take a little while to get this all implemented, but the issue is if the state is going to require you to have an ID, then it's up to the state to make sure, as far as possible, that you have one and that you can easily have one and that you don't have to get one every two to four years.

KATKO: Thank you, Professor.

Now let's continue the discussion on the trapeze.

♪ Here to weigh in on voter ID laws are our Director of Voting Rights and Elections from the Brennan Center for Justice, Sean Morales-Doyle, and Executive Director for the Center for Election Innovation and Research, David Becker.

Welcome, gentlemen, to the show, and I really appreciate you coming on.

Let's jump right into it.

David, is voter fraud really a problem in the United States.

If so, is voter ID legislation around that can solve it?

BECKER: Well, we know how much voter fraud there is in the United States, and it's not zero but it's very close to zero.

There's just not that much voter fraud in the United States.

It really is a testament to how seriously Americans take their elections, and there are so many checks and balances and protections against any kind of widespread fraud.

The fraud we see is extremely episodic, something like 0.000000, and you can keep on going down to 1%.

But as rare as voter fraud is, probably the most rare form of voter fraud is voter impersonation fraud, which is the kind of fraud that voter ID would address.

We really don't see it much, and you can understand why.

Why would a voter present themselves to multiple witnesses in order to cast one ballot in an election where maybe 160 million might be cast?

DOYLE: I agree completely with what David said.

I think it's an infinitesimal, vanishingly rare phenomenon, and that doesn't mean it's not something we should take seriously.

But the fact that it happens so rarely is a sign that we do take it seriously.

And as David said, we have lots of checks in the system to make sure that it's not happening.

KATKO: So, I'm going to take a step back.

In 1965, the Voting Rights Act which tried to fix a lot of wrongs in this country with respect to voting, especially in the South and the ridiculous tests they had that prevented minorities in particular from voting.

But a lot of that seemed to have been stunted to some extent by the Shelby County v. Holder decision in 2013.

Sean, if you could tell us a little bit about that, what your thoughts are, and how that changed the political and legal conversation on voter ID laws?

DOYLE: Sure.

So, prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, since the enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, there was this process in place called preclearance, where jurisdictions -- states and localities with a history of race discrimination in voting -- had to run any changes that they made to their voting systems, their voting processes, their voting laws, by the federal government to make sure they weren't discriminatory before they put them into effect.

The Supreme Court decision effectively put that preclearance process on mothballs.

It effectively did away with it by saying that Congress needed to come up with a new formula for deciding which jurisdictions were going to be subject to preclearance.

And since then, we have seen many, many states pass restrictive voting laws, change their practices, and actually some of our research at the Brennan Center has demonstrated that as a result of that Supreme Court decision, we've seen the gap between participation by white voters and voters of color grow.

It's growing across the country, but it's growing twice as fast in those jurisdictions that used to be subjected to this preclearance process.

So the effects have been real, and they've been dramatic.

KATKO: David, your take?

BECKER: Yeah, I mean, I used to work at the Department of Justice, and I enforced the Voting Rights Act.

Section 5, the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act, was a very effective tool to prevent jurisdictions where there had been historical racism to prevent them from backsliding with regard to voting rights.

But all that said, the real issue with regard to voter ID laws is whether they're necessary or not -- and they're largely not necessary.

But the question is not whether ID should be provided, but what happens to those voters who, for whatever reason, legitimately don't have ID at the time they vote when they're eligible voters?

You don't want to turn those voters away.

So even in the case of states that tried to impose new voter ID requirements when Section 5, the preclearance requirement, was still in effect-for instance, in the mid-'90s, when I was in the DOJ-the DOJ, even under the Clinton administration precleared those because there were fail-safes to prevent eligible voters from being turned away.

There were, for instance, provisions where a voter who didn't have their ID could sign an affidavit and say, "I am who I say I am, please let me vote."

And these were adequate protections to ensure that voter fraud wouldn't occur while also preventing eligible voters from being disenfranchised because of some ID requirement.

KATKO: Now, I've got to ask, Sean, you both have said the same thing that there's not widespread voter ID fraud.

Why is it such a prevalent thing in the narrative in the United States now that kind of formed the impetus for these voter ID laws nationwide?

Why do people believe that there's widespread voter fraud?

DOYLE: I think there are a couple of reasons for that.

One reason is that there are a lot of people out there with loud voices and loud megaphones who keep repeating the idea that there's a problem with fraud.

And it's actually the introduction of all of these restrictive voting policies that often feeds that, right?

Sometimes people say, "We're just doing this in order to make people feel more confident in our elections."

But actually, by continuously suggesting that we need more rules and more restrictions in effect in order to clean up the problem, you're suggesting to people that there is a problem.

So one part of this is just a massive campaign to convince people that there is fraud in our elections in order to justify various kinds of restrictive voting policies.

Another problem is just that, you know, people have heard things from way back when about fraud in our elections, or they see the rare instance where someone does do something inappropriate in elections, and they want to believe a conspiracy theory.

They want to believe, you know, that there are nefarious elements out there trying to come after their elections.

And it just sounds very reasonable to people to say, "Well, you have to show an ID," because they show IDs in so many other circumstances in their lives besides voting.

And that makes sense.

I understand why people feel that way.

And so I think it's really important to just remind folks that this conversation about "Should we have voter ID?

Shouldn't we have voter ID?"

is often framed in this kind of on-off switch way, is there going to be voter ID or is there not?

But as David pointed out, it's a much more complicated conversation.

The Brennan Center is not opposed to people having to identify themselves.

The Brennan Center is opposed to extremely restrictive forms of voter ID rules that don't have those fail-safes that David was talking about, that don't give people who don't have the particular ID that is necessary available to them at the moment an opportunity to still exercise their fundamental constitutional right.

And it just becomes this really easy question for people, if you pose it as, "Should people have to show ID or not?"

most people are going to come down on the side of, "Yes, why not?

That seems easy enough."

And we're not really getting into the nuance that I think is required to have a conversation about what the right policy is.

KATKO: So, David, are you in favor of voter ID laws given the data and given the narrative, more importantly?

And if so, how would you implement them?

BECKER: So I don't really have a strong opinion one way or the other.

As Sean indicated, there isn't just a voter ID law as a simple toggle, yes or no.

There are places-every place in the United States requires voters to identify themselves in some way.

It might be through an ID card, it might be through sharing information that only they would have, it might be through signature matching or ID matching on a mail ballot envelope.

Every single ballot is ID-verified, and every single voter in the United States has to provide ID in order to register to vote under a federal law that passed in 2002, the Help America Vote Act.

And a lot of people don't realize this.

The election officials who run our elections-Republicans and Democrats, hundreds of thousands of public servants have done a remarkable job of keeping our elections secure, despite some of the lies and disinformation that have been spread, often by losing candidates.

And then you often get legislators, politicians, who are trying to game the system.

It happens on both sides of the aisle, in a way that they think will lead to their victory.

That almost always fails.

And when you talk to election officials, which are the people that I work with, of both parties, what they will tell you is they want every eligible voter to be able to vote and only eligible voters to be able to vote.

And we currently have a system that does that really well.

KATKO: I've got one last question for both of you.

Sean, we'll start with you.

If voter ID fraud is not a widespread problem in the United States, why do both parties make such a big deal about it?

DOYLE: Unfortunately, I think a lot of that has to do with politics.

I think people know that it's an issue that people find compelling, that many voters find compelling.

But also, it's a way that some politicians have used this fear of fraud and this idea of fraud to justify policies that do make it harder to vote, to justify changing the way that our elections work.

As David mentioned earlier, to justify claiming that they won an election that they lost.

And so, it's an easy place to go to justify whatever it is that you're attempting to carry out politically.

And it's not really about the issue that we are discussing today, which is whether there's really a problem with fraud.

BECKER: If you ask the hundreds of thousands of election officials -- the public servants, Republicans, and Democrats, who give us all our voice, who work on elections year-round -- they'll tell you this isn't an issue.

And they don't really understand efforts to kind of raise distrust in our system, to breed distrust in our system, when our system is more secure than it's ever been by every measure.

What we have seen over decades is that politicians often try to game the system because they think it will help them.

We're seeing it now in the partisan gerrymandering battles and in other ways to tweak the system in ways they think will lead to political victories.

It almost always fails, but it nevertheless can lead to distrust in the system, which is really unfortunate.

Our system right now, by every measure, is more secure than it's ever been in American history, and every election official of both parties will tell you that.

And voters know that when they go out to vote in record numbers, as we've seen in recent years.

KATKO: Thank you, gentlemen.

Now it's time for my take.

♪.. The Civil Rights Act from 1965 was a landmark victory for American democracy, tearing down barriers like literacy tests and poll taxes that once suppressed voter turnout, especially among African Americans.

Those protections should never be weakened under any circumstances.

At the same time, in a modern highly-advanced society, it's easy to understand why three-quarters of Americans believe that some form of identification should be required to vote, especially as it's already needed for so many other parts of our daily life.

The onus is thus on the government to make voting easily accessible, and issuing free, national or state IDs could be the way to achieve that.

For those who can't easily reach an office, mobile units could visit senior centers, shelters, schools, and other community hubs, for example.

If someone lacks traditional documentation, such as a birth certificate, affidavits with social workers, teachers, and shelter managers could suffice.

This approach would prevent voter suppression, help more Americans obtain valid ID for everyday use, and quiet the false narrative of widespread voter fraud.

This would also strengthen public confidence in our elections.

So let's explore it.

And that's my take.

♪ Now, for what's happening next week in Washington, we turn to Bloomberg's Josh Wingrove.

Josh, welcome to the show, and right off the bat, tell me, what's going on with respect to the government shutdown?

What are you hearing?

WINGROVE: Well, right now, thank you for having me.

Unfortunately, I think it looks like there's not an end in sight any time soon to this.

Anything can change, but both sides really seem to be focused on pinning this on the other one, rather than trying to find any common ground, in particular in the Senate, to get those Democratic votes that would bring them above the threshold to reopen the government.

President Trump, of course, is trying to brand this a Democratic-led shutdown.

This is, of course, technically true that the shutdown could end tomorrow if they had enough Democratic votes.

Democrats have been pressing for policy changes as well and basically see leverage here.

President Trump has not exactly done a ton in his second term to sort of reach out to Democrats ahead of this, you know, try to seek a deal ahead of time.

So both sides right now fundamentally think that they have the high ground, both sort of morally and politically, but also in public opinion.

Of course, time will tell whether that proves to be true, but right now, it does not look like there's an end in sight.

So we're going to just continue to have these questions about how it's going to roll on.

There are going to be, for instance, more layoffs.

Remember, they're seeking to fire people or dismiss people outright rather than just furlough them.

And other questions about whether the president will try to move money around to, for instance, pay troops, which is one of those pressure points that might have driven them to a deal sooner.

KATKO: Josh Wingrove from Bloomberg News.

Thanks so much, my friend.

WINGROVE: Thank you.

KATKO: That's all for this week, folks.

To send in your comments for the show or see "Balancing Act" extras and exclusives, follow us on social media or go to balancingactwithjohnkatko.com.

Thank you for joining us, and remember, in a circus that is politics, there's always a "Balancing Act."

I'm John Katko.

We'll see you next time, America.