Voter ID Laws Can't Stop Actual Voter Fraud

That isn't speculation; we have actual empirical evidence now.

From Think Progress:

In an effort to prove that the myth of widespread voter fraud is just that, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union has offered to pay $1,000 for a single example of voter impersonation. The offer applies to anyone who can show a prosecuted case of someone successfully voting by impersonating another person that would have been stopped by voter ID laws.

Those "documented cases of voter fraud" you may have heard about? None are a case of someone voting in place of someone else, which is the only kind of voter fraud that might be prevented by laws requiring special identification.

Take this recent case for example:

Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White can no longer serve in that position after he was found guilty of felony voter fraud charges.

White, the state’s chief election officer, was found guilty of six out of seven felony counts. The jury found him not guilty on a charge of fraud against a financial institution.

The charges centered around allegations that White was registered at his ex-wife’s home when he voted in the May primary even though he lived at a new townhouse on the other side of Fishers, making him ineligible to run for office. He admits the mistake but denies an effort to deceive calling the incident “an honest mistake.”

No voter ID law would have stopped White from committing voter fraud.

One important thing to remember is that the only widely publicized case of voter fraud in the past several years comes via a Republican Secretary of State, the state’s chief elections officer. So when conservatives go on and on about the need to crack down on rampant voter fraud, you should reply, “Yes, you’re right, those criminal Republican Secretaries of State need to be stopped.”

In Kentucky, a Democratic state legislator is being accused of voting out of district - again, an alleged violation that would not be stopped by voter ID laws.

Nor would voter ID laws stop these admitted violations by the Gingrich campaign in Virginia, or this hysterical false alarm in South Carolina.

What voter ID laws can and will do is prevent voting by people who are perfectly eligible to vote but who don't have and can't get the required ID.