Voter photo ID

Ten years ago, you could vote in any of the 50 states without having to show photo identification. Today, 11 states require voters to show photo ID before they can cast ballots.

Six of those states passed voter ID laws this year. Six more states with Republican-controlled legislatures could enact voter ID laws before next year’s elections. In all, 33 states took up such legislation this year.

“I very rarely see one single issue come up in so many state legislatures in a single session,” Jennie Bowser, a senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures, told USA Today.

GOP gains in November’s elections are largely responsible for the trend — nationally, Democrats have long been vehemently opposed to voter ID laws — but changes in public attitudes about privacy and the sanctity of elections are driving the trend as well.

The argument that requests for government-issued photo identification would deny the poor and minorities their right to vote used to carry the day. But Indiana’s photo identification law, passed in 2005, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 in a 6-3 decision authored by liberal Justice John Paul Stevens. Indiana’s law, Justice Stevens wrote, “is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting ‘the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.’ ”

The right to vote doesn’t merely protect a citizen’s right to cast a ballot. It protects each citizen’s vote from being cancelled out by someone casting an illegal ballot — or several ballots. The most effective way to do that is to make each voter meet an equally enforced standard: produce a photo ID, not a power bill or some other document that would allow anyone to assume the identity of anyone else.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, photo identification is required to board an airplane. Many businesses require photo ID for credit card purchases. Want to buy beer, wine or liquor, or enter a nightclub or concert that serves alcohol? If you look younger than 40, you’re probably going to be asked to show your photo ID.

Moreover, the proliferation of government services and interventions requires poor and jobless Americans to furnish photo identification to receive taxpayer-funded welfare and assistance. And in the age of new communications technology and social networking websites, Americans of all races and classes are putting their names and faces into cyberspace with more frequency than ever before. Far from being reluctant to identify themselves, millions upon millions of Americans are only too happy to do it for anyone who asks.

Because Democrats currently control Nevada’s Legislature, this state likely won’t have a voter photo identification law anytime soon. Senate Bill 373, sponsored by Las Vegas Republican Michael Roberson, died in committee this year. But as more states pass such standards and suffer no drop in voter turnout as a result, it will be harder to argue against asking voters for their photo IDs.