Proof of Citizenship? Missouri Vies for the Worst Voting Law in the Country

Missouri's Republican-controlled legislature is rushing to pass one of the country's most draconian voter ID requirements less than two weeks after the Supreme Court upheld Indiana's similarly restrictive photo ID law -- a law that's best known for serving as a vital bulwark against nuns voting. Missouri trumps that: It now seems that the state that brought us the likes of GOP anti-voting fraud zealot "Thor" Hearne and became "Ground Zero" for GOP vote suppression schemes in 2006 could take the brass ring from Florida and Ohio as the state most hostile to its own voters' rights.

There's a good reason that the Republicans are moving so quickly to pass a proposed constitutional amendment that could thwart at least 240,000 Missouri citizens from voting in November. The state is a presidential battleground state where recent gubernatorial and Senate races have been decided by margins as little as 21,000 votes.

"If you exclude 240,000 people from the electorate, that is plenty to swing the election in Missouri," says John Hickey, the executive director of the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition (ProVote). He and other advocates are urging Missouri residents to contact their legislators to protest.

Last week, the House passed a resolution on a strict party-line vote that would place a constitutional amendment on the ballot demanding documentary requirements to vote. It is now up for debate in the state Senate and could go before voters as early as August. An amendment to the state constitution is necessary since the legislature's 2006 voter ID was struck down by the Missouri Supreme Court.

The vaguely-worded amendment will, if approved by voters, permit the legislature to enact laws requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and current photo ID to cast a ballot. By blocking tens of thousands of U.S. citizens from either registering or voting, Missouri's pending bill could become, if passed, the toughest law in the country. Only five states require voters to show government-issued photo ID to vote and just one state -- Arizona -- requires would-be voters to prove their citizenship, according to research by Project Vote.

The resolution's sponsor, State Rep.Stanley Cox, is peddling the claim that this demand for photo ID was "not taking away rights."

"When anybody fraudulently votes, it diminishes all of our votes," he said last week when the resolution passed the state House. But there hasn't been a single proven case of voter impersonation at the polls in the state's history. And based on the experience of Arizona, between seven and 30 percent of citizens lack the citizenship documentation needed to register to vote.

But protecting voters from fraud isn't the real goal of this measure -- it's just helping GOP officials hold on to political power by blocking Democratic-leaning voters, critics say. "Their spin is that the elections are overrun with fraud," says the non-partisan Missouri ACORN's legislative director, Julie Terbrock. "But this measure effectively disenfranchises all these voters," she says, citing the Secretary of State's report on citizens without ID.

At a fair-election coalition press conference at the League of Women Voters' headquarters in Jefferson City, a few nuns came forward to express their concerns that the Catholic sisters in their convents lack the required ID. In fact, before the news conference, Sister Sandy Schwartz of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary in St. Louis reported the results of an informal survey of nuns in her order. "Fifteen [of 35 voters] did not have state-issued photo IDs," she observed. "This may sound like a good idea at first, but once you stop to think about who would really be affected, this is going to keep a lot of our loved ones from being able to vote."