Virginia Rising

“It’s basically treating classes of voters differently, so I felt it was needed.”

Since July 1, voters in Virginia must present a valid photo ID when casting their ballot at the polls.

Acceptable forms of ID include a Virginia driver’s license; a U.S. passport or any other photo ID issued by the U.S., Virginia or one of its political subdivisions; a student ID issued by any institute of higher learning in Virginia; or any employee identification card. Voters without such identification may apply for a free state-issued ID card.

But the requirement does not include absentee voters — except those who complete their application for an absentee ballot in person.

The House Privileges and Elections Committee passed House Bill 1318 on a 16-6 party-line vote. It now is headed to the House floor.

Democrats criticized the legislation and alleged it is designed to “strike fear” into people.

“Republicans seem to think that the Democrats can’t win an election unless we cheat, for some reason,” said Del. Mark D. Sickles, D-Fairfax, a member of the elections committee.

“And they keep trying to think of ways people are fooling the system. But voter fraud for ID purposes has not been found anywhere; it doesn’t exist. The major fraud that is out there is people who don’t live in the area they are voting in, but people are not impersonating other people to vote,” Sickles said.

Tram Nguyen, co-executive director of the liberal-leaning civics group New Virginia Majority, said the legislation would add “a whole new category of voters” who would have to get a state-issued voter ID.

“One of the reasons why photo ID implementation last year didn’t cause as many problems as we have seen in other states is because there was no photo ID requirement for absentee mail-in voters,” Nguyen said.

“That took care of a lot of seniors who no longer drive or folks with disabilities, because they could vote by absentee mail and didn’t have to have a photo ID in order to do that.”

Nguyen also said she has identified a weakness in the proposal.

“If the intent of the voter ID is to compare the voter to the photo to verify the identity, and you are mailing in a copy of an ID, registrars have nothing to compare the picture to. So it’s really not doing anything other than adding another barrier for voters and creating more work for registrars,” she said.

Campbell did not have a response ready on Friday. “Off the top of my head, I can’t answer that,” he said.