No, I shouldn’t be revealing this information, but if it helps to illustrate how weak so-called “voter ID” law enforcement is, so be it.

Voter ID States

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) has identified 36 states that presently have some type of “voter ID” requirement, in which the strictest states require a government-issued photo ID.

And this number is increasing. In June, Nebraska approved Legislative Bill 514 which implements voter ID requirements for Nebraska elections beginning in May 2024. Nebraska will be a “strict” voter ID state.

As the NCSL states:

Proponents argue increasing identification requirements can prevent in-person voter impersonation and increase public confidence in the election process. 

From https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/voter-id

The exact IDs that are required vary from state to state, but all states accept a state-issued driver’s license or other state ID (REAL ID or not) as an acceptable form of identification for voting.

Sounds great, right?

But there’s a problem.

Making and detecting fake IDs

I hope you’re sitting down for this.

People create fake driver’s licenses.

These range from the novelty types of driver’s licenses pictured above to ones that are more sophisticated.

Of course, there are ways to detect fake driver’s licenses.

• When you present your ID to a Transportation Security Agency official, they place the ID in a specialized machine which, among other things, can detect forgeries.
• And if you win money at a Las Vegas casino, they will check your ID also before paying out (as an underage friend of mine learned the hard way).

How can YOU detect a fake ID? Well, you can buy a book such as the “I.D. Checking Guide” or similar reference and compare the presented ID to the examples in the book.

There are more robust ways to detect a fake ID. Nametag has five suggestions:

1. Check the hologram. You can do this without using any special tools, so it’s an easy way to spot a fake ID…unless the fraudster has placed a hologram on their document.
2. Check for tampering. Sometimes this is obvious to the naked eye, sometimes not so obvious. For example, a fraudster may have clumsily pasted another photo on top of the real photo. But maybe the tampering isn’t so obvious.
3. Inspect the microprint. You’ll need a magnifying glass for this, but if you know what to look for, you can spot fraudulent IDs…unless the fraudster also added the appropriate microprinting to their document.
4. Look for ultraviolet (UV) features. You’ll need a UV light for this, but again this can reveal forgeries…unless the fraudster also incorporated UV features into their document.
5. Use Nametag products. These (and similar products from other companies such as Regula) can check for fraud that the untrained eye cannot detect.

These fraud detection techniques are great if you work for the TSA or a casino full-time and have the appropriate training and equipment to detect fake IDs.

Enter the untrained, unequipped fraud guardians

But what about precinct workers?

They work one or maybe a few days a year, and it’s very doubtful that the elections authorities:

• Train and test precinct workers in the detection of fraudulent IDs.
• Provide precinct workers with reference materials, magnifiying glasses, ultraviolet lights, or automated hardware and software to detect fraudulent IDs.

If the precinct workers don’t have the training, equipment, and software, Phineas T. Bailey could walk up to a local precinct, show a fake ID saying that he is Joe Real, and if Joe Real is registered to vote in that precinct, Phineas can go ahead and vote.

Some security.

But no one would ever vote with a fake ID…would they?

“But John,” you say. “No one would ever create a fake ID and use it to vote.”

Well, let’s look at this ID.

On at least two occasions, John Wahl presented the ID above when voting.

When poll workers asked Alabama GOP Chairman John Wahl for his voter ID, he gave them a card they’d never seen before. He texted this picture of it to the Limestone County Probate judge, who then approved him to vote.

From https://www.al.com/news/2022/10/alabama-gop-chairman-made-the-photo-id-he-used-to-vote.html

However, it was subsequently discovered that Wahl made the ID himself.

(Why? Because Wahl and other members of his family object to biometric identification for religious reasons. Rather than submitting to the standard biometric identification processes used to create driver’s licenses and other government forms of identification, Wahl simply had an unnamed third party create his own ID, with the knowledge of the State Auditor.)

This incident ended up being a little embarrassing…because John Wahl happens to head the Alabama Republican Party (as of December 2023).

So how do you fix it?

If you’re going to insist that people present legitimate IDs for voting, then you need to enforce it, both for people who present IDs in person and for people who present IDs remotely. There are a number of companies that provide hardware and software to verify the legitimacy of driver’s licenses and other government-issued documents.

Of course, that costs money. Depending upon the solution you choose, it could cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to protect the more than 230,000 polling places from identity fraud.

And some argue that there’s no need to spend a lot of money on this, because voting fraud isn’t a real problem. Even the Heritage Foundation’s 2020 report of “1,285 proven cases of voter fraud” looks a little less dramatic when you consider that there were 161,420,000 registered voters in the United States in 2022. So even if there were, let’s say, 11,000 proven cases of voter fraud, that’s only 0.007% of the total electorate.

But for now, if you want to vote fraudulently, vote away.