and clean up voting roles. no one is contesting the fact that there are problems in our electoral system. but the problem is not individuals by and large misrepresenting themselves. the problem is that we don't have laws that are in compliance with the national voter registration act, with the help america vote act, where the roles are being cleaned up so people cannot appear and show up and vote in the name of a dead person. >> can you just respond to the 1,000 voters in indiana who showed up without id and were not allowed to vote? >> there's no indication did they take the trouble of trying to get the free photo id that they could have easily gotten. in fact, in the aclu case in georgia, this very same claim was made, and i've actually got copies of the depositions in that case.

and in each deposition of a witness that was brought forward by the aclu, it turned out in the questioning each of these individuals could have easily gotten a photo id, they just didn't bother to do it before the election. that is not a problem -- well, the judge -- that's certainly what the judge said. people can read the opinion themselves and they'll see how the case was dismissed. the case was dismissed and the law has now been in effect since that dismissal for five years, and in that entire time, the aclu has not gone back to court and come up with any individuals who will be unable to vote because of that photo id law. by the way, at least half a dozen of the plaintiffs, named plaintiffs in the aclu lawsuit in wisconsin are people who have photo driver's licenses from other states, and their complaint is they don't want to

have to trade in their driver's license from another state and get a wisconsin driver's license. normally you only get a driver's license where you are a resident. if they have driver's licenses from other states, apparently they could i guess be attempting to vote twice and perhaps the aclu wants them to be able to vote twice because they have photo ids from other states where they're supposedly not residents. >> just to clarify one thing. both of you are mentioning about the photo id you in just two sentences define a common photo id that is applicable everywhere? >> that's the problem. everywhere.t a photo id some states -- there are degrees of photo ids. some states will not allow you to use an expired photo id from the same state. some states will not allow you to use a photo id from out of

state. some states will allow you to show, if you have a driver's license from out of state and you've recently moved there but you can produce a utility bill or something else to show that you are, in fact, a resident, some states allow that. th range of photo id laws. but what we're seeing is state legislatures are adopting much more restrictive photo id mothe. she stopped driving at the age of 70. she ran for elected office three times in baltimore. she died at the age of 84. she did not have to use an updated photo id to fly, to enter a government office building or to vote. and she was a very active member of society. and i don't understand why this most important expression of citizenship should be so

burdened by cost. you look at any congressional district, you will find hundreds of polling places, but you're not likely to find hundreds of department of motor vehicle offices. in rural areas you have to go great distances. a lot of people don't have a photo id in new york city because they don't own cars. so the idea that this is not burdensome and this does not impede people's access to the polls is ridiculous. if you don't believe the aclu, i would like you -- and to any of the reporters in the room, i'd be happy to send you, 2005 letter from kathy cox, secretary of state of the state of georgia who was begging then governor sunny purdue not to sign the photo id bill into law. and she said it was unnecessary. it creates significant on

stackals in voting. it was unlikely to receive pre clearance of the voting rights act by the justice department. i'll get to that in a minute. and it violates the constitution of georgia, and it was hans vonn spa kof ski who made sure that that voter id law in georgia got cleared over the objection of six career employees who wrote to congress to denounce him after he was appointed to thede and successfully got him to withdraw his application to be confirmed by the fec because they said he used so much political influence in the upho georgia photo id law. so hans is deeply invested in voter id laws. he has the right to his beliefs, but it's not just the aclu who is concerned about this.

there are many secretary of states who are concerned about the burdens these photo id laws place on the electoral process. >> i didn't realize this was going to devolve into personal attacks. i believe i have the ability to respond to that. >> okay. you do. >> the justice department pre cleared the georgia voter id law because all the data that was submitted by the state showed it would not be drim nah tory. the chief of the voting section, a 30-yeesh veteran of the department, a career lawyer testified before congress that his opinion was it was not discriminatory. who was correct? some of the employees who complained? well, in the aclu lawsuit that was filed against the georgia voter id law after pre clearance, a claim was made that the law was discriminatory under the voting rights act. the court found it was not discriminatory. and the proof in the pudding is

the fact tha as i in elections since then and all of the election data on turnout i got from american university which has an election center well respected, it has turnout data and from the secretary of state's own voting site show that, in fact, turnout went up and they've had not any problems with the law there. i might mention the fact that kathy cox at the time was planning her run for governor which she then lost. >> thank you very much. i would just like to again remind that this discussion is about the actual and potential impacts of the new voter id laws. so if the questions and the answers can stick to these please. >> i'm peggy with the hispanic outlook on higher education. i have two questions. number one, student voting. university of virginia, for instance, there's over 50% of

those students are out of state. so they would have -- or foreign students. but there is a move to say that they only have to present their student id in order to vote. i would think there's some potential fraud there. my second question is about immigrant voting. we have a group going on right now talking about the new campaign that often used the word to get immigrants to vote. we know immigrants aren't citizens. how do you -- how does the aclu feel that citizenship should be verified because of the dlooifer's license or a utility bill is not going to verify citizenship. >> your question is addressed to both? >> yeah -- well maybe susan can handle -- i think the new heritage foundation has done

some work on noncitizen voting. >> there's all kinds of cases showing citizens, people who are not citizens voting. anybody who wants to see the most recent story about it, just google local nbc station in florida, collier county i think last week did a story in which they found at least 100 individuals in just one county in florida who were registered and who had voted multiple elections and were not u.s. citizens. the only way to do this is to do what arizona, georgia and kansas have done which is require proof of citizenship when you register to vote. and for those who are interested, georgia, because it is a section five state, had to submit its proof of citizenship requirement to the justice department for pre clearance. the justice department, the obama administration pre cleared the law and said it was not discriminatory against section five.

that's why that law is now in effect and in place in georgia. >> i would only ask that you look at the numbers of people who have attempted to vote who are noncitizens, and you'll see they are an infant tess mall part of the electorate. many times people who are in naturalization proceedings make the mistake of assuming that they are able to vote. so it doesn't necessarily show, because some people have tried to vote, that their intent -- it doesn't prove it was their intent to defraud the system. sometimes they are under the impression that they are eligible to vote when they are not eligible to vote. the same thing has happened to people who have served their debt to society stlu cll penalties. some of them believe that they are eligible to vote when they are not. and so i think it's really important to look at the proportion of people who engage in this behavior compared to the

number of people who vote and who are voting lawfully, and you will find that the percentage is infant tess mall. we have to ask ourselves whether the burden to go after this tiny group of people is worth the burdens placed on legitimate eligible voters. >> [ inaudible ]. >> states are really the people in charge of who is eligible to vote and who is qualified to vote in that particular state. so if a student declares residency in their college town, the question becomes, you know, do they have to transfer their driver's license from their home state? do they have to pay bills? i think if a student declares residency in their college town

and they are otherwise qualified to vote, the question i have is why shouldn't they be able to vote if they've declared and they're duly registered. why shouldn't they be eligible to vote? >> a moment of rare agreement. i certainly agree with that. >> debra barry with gwinnett washington bureau. what impact do you expect from doj's decision on the south carolina law? do you expect other states to consider similar laws or not and do you expect legal challenges? >> the south carolina attorney general has already filed a lawsuit to overturn the justice department's decision. i think they're going to win because the data that south carolina submitted after they adjusted it showed that what they did is they took their voter registration list, compared it to their dmv list. once they had taken out people

who were dead which were tens of thousands of people who were still on the voter registration list, there were tens of thousands of individuals who moved out of state. once they took all that data out, it showed that before they've done anything to try to get people free ids who don't have one, only a little over 1% of individuals who were already registered to vote in the state don't already have a driver's license. the idea that it is going to have a discriminatory impact i don't think the justice department is going to be able to prove that in court. i think they're going to lose and south carolina's law will be upheld by the federal district court. >> would you call it infant tess mall? >> i think it's a disparate law. not only does south carolina provide a free photo id, they put in a provision that say ifs you show up to a polling place

without an id and sign an affidavit in which you say that you had a reasonable impediment -- that's the language in the law -- a reasonable impediment that prevented you from getting a photo id, you'll be given a provisional ballot and the ballot will be counted unless local election officials have hefd that, in fact, you're not the person who you say you are. >> would you like to add something? >> you know, the supreme court in the crawford decision challenging the photo id law in indiana said that they would not strike down the law on a facial challenge. they left open the door for an as-applied challenge. so what we now have the burden of doing in these states that are passing photo id laws is the very expensive task of finding out who is affected, who is not

affected and bringing fourth their stories. we think we are gathering very compelling stories in missouri and wisconsin and arizona. so we intend to litigate this as long as we're around because we think that this is an egregious and unnecessary barrier to voting under the guise of attempting to do something about fraud. now, i think we all should look at the pew study that just came out because it did talk about the flaws in the voting system. but they said the flaws were due more to poor recordkeeping and not to fraud. and so we have to clean up our voter roles. and if we could get more states to comply with the national voter registration act and the help america vote act, we would not have so many poorly

maintained voting records at the state level. i think the problem is with the way that the states operate the election laws, not with the numbers of individuals who are trying to commit fraud because, again, if you go to the poll and represent that you are not the person you say you are, you're only successful in changing one vote. and that's just not an intelligent way to go about fraud. the real fraud comes in giving false information, telling people -- moving polling places at the last minute, not purging the roles of dead people. that's where you get into the real numbers. but these cases of individuals going to the polls and representing that they are not someone who they are are rare. we also have to take into account that people have the same names. and so there are four william h. murphys in my family.

one is deceased and three are alive. and they have the same name, same -- two of them have the same card that looks just alike, and it's very easy to transpose a social security number or an address. some people will look at that as fraud when that's really poor recordkeeping that leads people to that conclusion that people are trying to double vote. >> high name is jennifer for cbn news. i was hoping you could sum up what you think these laws, the ones already on the books, ones that are going to be coming online before november, what effect they'll have on the presidential election in november? >> i think the only effect they have is they'll prevent people who are not eligible to vote

from voting. where will that make a difference? it will make a difference in any state where there's a close election. you don't get that that often in national elections, but you certainly get it a lot in local elections which are often decided by a very small number of votes. a good example of this is a state senate race in tennessee where they just passed a photo id, won by only 13 votes in the 2005-2007. an election was overturned by the state legislature. why? because when they investigated it, not only were there local election officials committing fraud, they discovered there had been votes cast by individuals whose registered address was a vacant lot, and people who lived not in the district where this was going on. that shows how this can affect an election. i agree with laura we have a

problem with sloppy voter registration records. the pew center report mentions that. something gone unmentioned here is a year and a half ago there was sworn testimony before the u.s. commission on civil rights by two former career lawyers in the voting section of the civil rights division at the department of justice including the former chief of the vetting section, a long-time career lawyer at the section who said that he had recommended at least eight states for investigation for not complying with the provision of motor voter mbra that requires cleaning up voter roles. not only was nothing done about it, but he was specifically told by the political appointees within the division that the administration had no interest whatsoever in enforcing this particular provision of the law. >> that's certainly not what the attorney general and officials at the justice department have told us.

they have told us they are interested in enforcing the voting rights act, the national voter registration act and the help america vote act. so i don't know who these officials are, but the impact - going back to your question -- the impact on the 2012 elections what we do know is that it's very unlikely that these laws will be adjudicated before the election. the supreme court is not going to likely hear any cases before the november 2012 election, or issue any verdicts, and so we are figuring out ways to educate people. we believe that there will be many eligible voters who will not turn out, because they believe that they don't have the proper identification to vote. and we believe that these fraud allegations have the potential to scare people away from the

polls, and we're concerned about that, and so it's incumbent upon the media and interest groups who want a robust and participatory society to educate people about what the state law requires and to seek assistance of organizations like ours in trying to turn out and vote. so i think it will have an impact on the elections, but we just don't know how it will impact the elections. >> hi. i'm tom curry with nbc politics dotcom. following on what laura murphy just said, in wisconsin, if the federal court enjoined the voter i.d. law, you said you don't think the supreme court would resolve these cases before november, but if the laws enjoined in wisconsin, if

they -- not allowed to use it, wouldn't -- >> it's possible but not likely. >> but -- do you think the supreme court, because the law's already been used in tuesday's election, that the supreme court would see a need to resolve this before november? >> it's hard to predict. >> and one other question. can either of you relate this -- in this filing with the federal court here in washington, texas said the court must get preclearance to our photo i.d. law in order to avoid grave constitutional questions about section 5 in the voting sections right act. in other words if you don't let us use this law, then -- can you relate this to the ongoing litigation over section 5 of the voting rights acted? >> sure. there's a number of pending cases that say that when section 5 of the voting act was renewed

in 2006, it was unconstitutional. and the basic claim there is that in 1965 when think was passed as a temporary five-year emergency provision, back then it was considered constitutional, because at the time there was systematic widespread official discrimination, particularly against african-american voters in the south, but the claim that's being made in the lawsuits now contesting the constitutionality of section 5, when it was renewed in 2006, there was simply no evidence of that kind of systematic widespread discrimination that justified it in 1965 and that there's no evidence to show that states like virginia, for example, which is still covered, are today so different from neighboring states like maryland and pennsylvania, which are not covered, that the federal government should have approval rights over laws that are passed by the states, which is a very extraordinary intrusion into

the -- the rights of a sovereign state. the -- the cases -- there are are two of them. shelby count any kinston, north caro carolina actually at the case of appeals. they're behind that. they have a good claim that if this photo i.d. law, which there's no evidence that it's discriminatory, if the justice department objects to it, that that's further evidence that section 5 really is not constitutional anymore. >> you know, the -- congress went to great pains to establish a record for the extension of the voting rights act in 2006, and it was signed into law by a republican president, and i don't know who was in control of the congress at the time that the law passed. it was split control, one house democratic, and one how republican, and republicans have used the voting rights act in

redistricting and relied upon it for, ever since it passed in 1965. so i seriously doubt that in a split congress with a republican president, if there was an -- a record that was absent, that did not demonstrate ongoing discrimination based on race, i seriously doubt the law would have been extended the way it was in 2006. so there is a chance to make the case that we're no longer a nation ripe with racial discrimination, but the opposite case was made. the case was made that there's discrimination based on english language proficiency. that there's discrimination based on race and that these

still entrenched problems in the united states. so i just don't think it would have been extended in 2006, had there not been a very strong record. >> the other question at the back? >> i was wondering, mostly more hans. any other measures other than in photo i.d. you in would be adequate to prevent the, i guess, fraud issue? it seems to me there would be a few other measures that would possibly prevent it without, say, stopping anyone who was allowed to vote, from voting, you know, i guess would you support the affidavit measure as being tapped on to any of these photo i.d. laws or perhaps some sort of other form in which way people get -- have there been any examples of ways in which people approach a polling station with, say, some other form of identification that's not a photo i.d.? say a water bill, where they've proved they were impersonating someone else? >> i don't know about that, but, you know, a couple weeks ago i'm

sure you saw the undercover video by james o'keefe in new hampshire that a gop primary, new hampshire has no photo i.d. law and they simply found the names of people still registered and dead and on the list and went in and asked for ballots and they got them in every case. there's a case from 2007 in hoboken, new jersey, where this happened in a real election, where a poll watcher, happened to be the former president of the zoning board for are hoboken noticed a group of individuals on a street corner being handed index cards. he went past them and went on into his polling place. a little while later one of those individuals came in, gave the name of a voter, tried to vote in that person's name. new jersey has no photo i.d. requirement, and when this gentleman challenged him, he ran out of the polling place. this gentleman chased him down, called the police on his cell phone. he arrested him and when they

arrested the individuals he admitted that he and this other group of individuals were from a homeless shelter, that these two gentlemen had come to them and were paying them $10 each to go vote in the name of another voter, and handed them an index card to have the name of the voter they should go vote in. this was documented in newspaper articles and the zoning board president wrote a letter to the senate rules committee documenting what had happened. that's a recent example of this kind of thing happening. other measures taken, i've talked about photo inc.d., proo of citizenship and something else states should do, they should require all county court clerks and the federal government should require all federal court clerks to notify election officials when individuals who have been called for jury duty are excused because they swear under oath that they are not u.s. citizens. why? because most jury lists are taken from voter registration

rolls. and there was a gao report in 2005 that reported there were instances ever this all over the country when they surveyed federal courts and that would be another way of getting people who are not u.s. citizens off the voter rolls. >> you know, i think it's really important that we not legislate by anecdote, and hans is full of these wonderful, compelling anecdotes, but that's a very different thing than having people come to the state houses and put information in the record that can be reviewed and analyzed by both parties, all the citizens, and it's a permanent part of the record. i'll give you an example. in the 38-year history of the main same-day voter registration law, there were only two examples of voter fraud in maine's history, and so there was not even a