Civic Register
| 9.13.17

Election Integrity Commission Considers Voter Background Checks

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What’s the story?

On Tuesday, President Trump’s commission on voter fraud will consider a proposal about requiring voters to pass a background check before casting their ballot—just like when purchasing a gun.

The Election Integrity Commission is meeting in New Hampshire to discuss "issues affecting public confidence." As reported in Countable, last week New Hampshire House Speaker Shawn Jasper, a Republican, accused thousands of Granite Staters – and those from nearby states - of casting illegal ballots. In response, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the vice chairman of the commission, alleged widespread voter fraud, which he said could have led to Trump losing the state—and stolen a U.S. Senate seat from Republicans.

Now, John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, is in New Hampshire presenting a possible solution to this kind of voter fraud.

In a phone call with the Kansas City Star, Lott said that federal background checks for purchasing a gun look into whether a person is a non-citizen and has a felony conviction, among other information. These same checks could be applied to voters, he says, because there are "similar rules for whether you can own a gun and whether you can vote."

Why does it matter?

In May, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order establishing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to look into voter fraud during the 2016 election.

Lott’s PowerPoint - available on the White House’s website in advance of the meeting - includes a slide titled "How to check if the right people are voting."

Republicans, he writes, "worry about voting by ineligible people" while “Democrats say that Republicans are just imagining things.” A solution that “might make both happy? Apply the background check system for gun purchases to voting.”

Lott then presents a series of bullet points under the heading "Democrats’ views on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)." These include:

  • Democrats have long lauded background checks on gun purchases as simple, accurate, and in complete harmony with the second amendment right to own guns

  • Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has bragged that the checks "make our communities and neighborhoods safer without in any way abridging rights or threatening a legitimate part of the American heritage."

  • If NICS doesn’t interfere "in any way" with people’s constitutional right to self defense, doesn’t it follow that it would work for the right to vote?

It does not, according to some.

The idea is "patently absurd," Adam Winkler, a constitutional law specialist at UCLA, told the Washington Post. Winkler notes that Lott has, in the past, argued that the NICS doesn’t work, so combining this with “the fact that the structure of voting regulation is entirely different than the regulation of guns, it's hard to believe this is a serious proposal.”

But Lott told the Post, "Yes, I am serious." And in an op-ed with the Chicago Tribune, he explained that NICS

"checks whether a person is in this country illegally, has a nonimmigrant visa or has renounced his citizenship" and that “in 34 states, felons are not able to vote immediately upon release. The background-check system would detect these too.”

Background checks typically run between $55 to $75 a person, but Lott is proposing that states pick up the costs.

New Hampshire had a population of 1.335 million in 2016. At between $55 to $75 per person, New Hampshire would have spent between an extra $73.4 to $100 million in the last presidential election.

California would pay at least $2 billion to perform background checks on its 39 million residents.

Twelve voting groups met in downtown Kansas City on Tuesday to protest the proposal, according to a local Fox affiliate. "They don’t like the idea of subjecting every voter to a criminal background check, afraid it will intimidate some from exercising their right to vote," Fox4kc.com wrote.

What do you think?

Should voters have to undergo background checks before casting ballots? Would background checks cut down on voter fraud? Or is just a way to intimidate some people into not voting? Is there even voter fraud to begin with? Is this proposal two expensive to be taken seriously? Hit the Take Action button, tell your reps, then let us know below—we don’t require a background check before commenting.

—Josh Herman

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(Photo Credit: cybrain / iStockphoto)