Voters in Missouri would have to show photo identification at the polls under a resolution passing the House and returning to the Senate.
A State Supreme Court ruling in 2006 struck down Missouri’s voter photo ID law. This year, legislators are pushing putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot: HCS#2 SJR2.
Either way, Rep. Jean Peters Baker, a Democrat from Kansas City, claims it’s a solution in search of a problem, because she says the last major voter fraud in Missouri occurred in 1936.
“This simply is a fiction. It’s a fiction. It doesn’t exist,” Baker says during House floor debate. “So, what’s our real motive? We’ve got to wonder, what’s our real motive? If there is no real voter fraud, then why are we here and why are we doing this?”
Republican Paul Curtman of Pacific counters the problem is real, recalling false paperwork filed in voter registration rolls collected by the group ACORN in the 2006 election in Kansas City.
“Obviously, the system is getting, things are kind of getting worse and there’s more opportunity for voter fraud and obviously we have had a problem a little bit more recently that the 1930s with voter fraud.” Curtman states.
Democrats charge that Republicans have pushed the idea in an effort to suppress voting blocks that tend to favor Democrats.