March 17, 2008 11:21AM # Boiling the Voter-ID Teapot By [Jim Harper](https://www.cato.org/people/jim-harper) --- SHARE Last week, former Federal Election Commissioner Hans A. von Spakovsky published a Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum entitled *[Stolen Identities, Stolen Votes: A Case Study in Voter Impersonation](http://www.heritage.org/Research/LegalIssues/lm22.cfm)*. Contrary to claims made by prominent newspapers and attorneys, he argues, in-person voting fraud is a real problem. The evidence he provides is a vote fraud ring that began operating in 1968 and that was broken up more than 25 years ago in 1982. Impersonation fraud can be committed at polling places, and a voter-ID requirement would make it a little harder, but a quarter-century-old case is hardly evidence of a significant problem. How states secure their voting processes should turn on how they structure their voting processes. States might choose a voter ID requirement if they can do so in a way that balances security against access, convenience, and privacy. Absentee balloting is generally a far greater threat to the security of elections than weak or non-existent ID requirements at polling places. The thing that matters most is avoiding a uniform national voter ID requirement. I wrote about this in my TechKnowledge piece [Voter ID: A Tempest in a Teapot That Could Burn Us All](https://www.cato.org/tech/tk/080107-tk.html): “To ensure that American voters enjoy their franchise in a free country, clumsy voter ID rules should be avoided. A national voter ID system should be taken off the table entirely.” ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Technology and Privacy](https://www.cato.org/technology-privacy), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).