In my recent article
on the excellent book Who’s Counting?, by John Fund and
Hans von Spakovsky, I noted specifically their reference to the
measures taken in Mexico to verify the identity of voters at the
polls. Mexico is not unusual in this regard. Strict requirements
that voters identify themselves adequately are the rule, and not
the exception, throughout the developed world.
Consider Greece. Like Mexico, Greece has a generally unhappy
reputation for corruption in government at all levels. But for all
its problems with patronage, bribery, poor tax compliance, and even
illegal immigration, Greece holds elections that are far less
susceptible to vote fraud than our own.
On a recent evening in Athens, we spoke at length about this
with Christina, a partner with a prestigious Athens corporate law
firm. She is currently spending most of her time working on the
privatization of publicly owned companies in Greece (another story,
to be sure!). Our conversation covered a wide range of topics, one
of which was measures taken to protect the integrity of
elections.
Christina has served as an election official on many occasions,
and is very familiar with voter registration and identification
procedures in Greece. We learned that, in Greece, attorneys and
judges are called on to serve as election officials, somewhat akin
to ordinary citizens being summoned for jury duty in the United
States.
For all of Greece’s other challenges — and to be sure,
Christina and other Greeks are well aware of their difficulties —
fraud at the ballot box is not a problem. There are reasons for
this that make a lot of common sense.
In Greece, for one thing, dead people are systematically and
reliably removed from the voter rolls. There is no such thing as
voting by mail; the danger of fraud is thought to outweigh the
convenience benefits of such a practice. For the same reason, there
are no absentee ballots, although Greeks residing elsewhere in the
European Union can go to the local Greek consulate and vote in E.U.
(but not Greek national and local) elections. Citizens who wish to
vote must go in person to their polling place, the equivalent of
the precinct where they are registered, in order to vote. This is
not considered an unreasonable requirement.
This is sensible and fair, Christina believes, because all Greek
citizens who register to vote receive a government issued identity
card. Christina showed us her Hellenic Republic Citizen Identity
Card, complete with photograph and other pertinent information.
Either this card, or a passport, must be presented at the polls,
where officials verify the information against the data in official
records. Persons without proper identification are turned away;
there are no “provisional” votes allowed for persons unable to
produce satisfactory identification.
Christina was not familiar with the now long running debate over
“voter identification” in the United States. In a majority of our
states, I explained to her, there are at most very weak (if any)
voter identification requirements. Furthermore, I said, our
Department of Justice opposes photo identification and similar
measures, even though millions of dead people and otherwise
ineligible “voters” remain on the registration rolls.
Christina’s reply to this was straightforward. “No photo
identification?,” she exclaimed, “That is crazy! How can you let
people vote without knowing who they are?”
In my view that’s a good question.
