CARCIERI

PROVIDENCE — Surrounded by GOP lawmakers, Governor Carcieri yesterday mounted an eleventh-hour appeal to the General Assembly’s Democratic leaders to eliminate the option of straight-party voting and require that voters produce a photo identification before they are allowed to vote.

At an afternoon news conference, Carcieri said the voter ID requirement would ensure “that voters are who they say they are,” and elimination of the straight-ticket option would spur more “thoughtful” consideration of candidates in Rhode Island, where Democrats hold an overwhelming majority in the General Assembly and in all statewide offices except the governor’s office.

As one of only 17 states that still allow straight-party voting, Carcieri said eliminating this option “will encourage voters to do their homework, consider candidates more carefully, and make informed decisions. Doing away with straight-ticket voting would give all candidates a fair chance.”

In actuality, the bills don’t go that far. They call for a nonbinding referendum on eliminating the straight-party voting option, which supporters hope will pressure the Assembly to act accordingly. The Voters First Advisory Commission, a group appointed by the secretary of state, also recommended putting straight-ticket voting to the public in a nonbinding referendum.

Both bills have their critics outside the political sphere, however, and with this year’s legislative session nearing an end, possibly as early as Friday, neither has won the support of a legislative committee.

The Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union has led the campaign against voter ID on the grounds that “these laws disenfranchise eligible voters, pose a particular burden on poor, elderly, disabled and minority voters, and divert attention from more serious problems facing the voting process — all in an attempt to ‘fix’ a largely non-existent problem of alleged voter impersonation.”

Carcieri said in his mind there is “no downside.”

But in letters to lawmakers and newspaper opinion pieces, state ACLU director Steve Brown took issue with Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis’ contention that the identification card he envisioned would be available for free, because “the documentation a voter would need to prove one’s identity in the first place in order to obtain the card would not be free.”

He cited a series of studies on the potential impact, including a University of Milwaukee study that found that less than half of African-American and Hispanic adults living in Milwaukee County had valid drivers’ licenses, and that approximately 23 percent of Wisconsin residents ages 65 and older did not have driver’s licenses or photo identification, and the Commission on Federal Election Reform’s 2001 estimate that 6 to 10 percent of voting-age Americans do not have a driver’s license or state-issued photo ID, and that those who lack photo ID are disproportionately poor and urban.

Brown also led a letter-writing campaign by 20 organizations, ranging from the AARP to the Commission for Human Rights, with concerns.

Explaining why the advocacy group Common Cause also opposes voter ID, director Christine Lopes said: “When we asked about research on how many cases of voter fraud existed in Rhode Island based on someone claiming to be someone else, nobody could produce any cases. The only cases we heard about had to do with people using business addresses for voting. We believe that there are bigger priorities that should be addressed where there are cited problems. For instance, cleaning up the voting lists.”

With respect to elimination of the party lever, Lopes said Common Cause didn’t initially see much need for action since state law (RIGL 17-19-15) already provides a voter with the option of voting for someone of a different party. While the law currently requires that all voting equipment “permit any voter to vote for all candidates of one of the respective parties by means of a single mark on the computer ballot” and “also permit the voter casting a straight party vote to individually vote for candidates, and in doing so, the straight party vote will not be counted for that office.”

“But when we started to ask Common Cause members and others about the issue, we found that a lot of people didn’t know that was the case and that it’s not always explained clearly at the polls,” Lopes said, so with the “national trend appearing to move away from party-lever voting, the board voted to support it’s elimination.”

The so-called “master lever” got its last real workout in the high-stakes 2006 U.S. Senate election. There were 61,357 straight-party votes for the Democratic ticket mingled among winner Sheldon Whitehouse’s final 206,110 votes, and 18,424 straight-party GOP votes within the 179,001 who voted for Lincoln Chafee, the defeated Republican incumbent.

Despite the strong feelings the issue raises among state Republicans, Maureen Moakley, a political science professor at the University of Rhode Island, says her research shows that there is not much partisan advantage in the straight-ticket option if it is viewed over time.

For example, Moakley says, it is correct that in 2006 many more Democrats voted the straight ticket than Republicans. But in 2004, she said, a larger percentage of registered Republicans voted a straight ticket than Democrats. “It works both ways,” Moakley said in a recent interview. “It depends on what election year you look at.”

Joining Carcieri at the podium yesterday were Sen. June Gibbs, R-Middletown, Rep. Nicholas Gorham, R-Coventry, and Harry Staley, a spokesman for a like-minded advocacy group that calls itself the Rhode Island Statewide Coalition. Other members of the House GOP were in the audience cheering them on.

Carcieri said 25 states already require some form of voter identification, and 17 of those require photo IDs.

kgregg@projo.com