Do SC pollworkers know the law they’re enforcing?

I got an email early this morning from John Schafer, who reported that when he asked the poll workers at his Spring Hill precinct in the Richland County portion of Irmo what happened if he didn’t have a photo ID, “The two ladies said, simultaneously, ‘Then you can’t vote.’ ”

He continued: “Since I was the only voter in the poll at the time, I let them expand on their answer before I corrected them and they eventually got around to the provisional ballot. I politely told them I had my ID, but I was quizzing them. They told me they were only responding as they were trained. The precinct manager was nowhere in sight, so I did not have a chance to talk with him.”

Mr. Shafer had also contacted me two weeks ago to report a similar encounter, and I had heard similar stories from others since South Carolina’s photo ID law took effect last year, so I decided to conduct my own test when I went to the Meadowfield precinct near the VA hospital to vote for Molly Spearman and Henry McMaster.

“What if I don’t have a photo ID?” I asked when one of the poll workers asked for it. “Ooh, that’s not good,” she replied. “What happens?” I asked again. “You need a photo ID,” she said. “But what if I don’t have one?” I asked. “You can still vote,” she said, and she and the other two women working at the precinct traded off explaining, fairly accurately, the law.

Which is this: If you simply forgot to bring a photo ID, you can still cast a provisional paper ballot, but then you have to take your photo ID to the county election office if you want your vote to count — which strikes me as a lot more of a hassle, particularly on a day like today, when at 8:30 in the morning, I cast the 26th GOP ballot of the day, than simply going home and getting the correct ID and returning to vote regularly.

But if you don’t own a photo ID, you can cast a regular ballot. They were a little fuzzy on what happened next, and I saved them by telling them I was just testing them.

The details, according to SC Attorney General Alan Wilson’s “interpretation” of state law, codified in a federal court order, are these: People who don’t have a a S.C. driver’s license or ID card issued by the state Department of Motor Vehicles, a federal military ID , a U.S. passport or one of the new photo voter registration cards that local election commissions have been issuing to people who request them under the new law can’t be can’t be turned away from the polls. They can’t even be subjected to the normal provisional ballot requirements.

Instead, they need merely certify that they have a “reasonable impediment for not having a photo ID , such as lack of a birth certificate or transportation or “any other obstacle you find reasonable.” That provision, not in state law but in the court order, prohibits election officials from questioning what voters define as “reasonable.” (Voters do, however, have to bring their photo-less voter registration card in order to qualify for the “reasonable impediment” exception.)

I’ve never had a problem with requiring a photo ID to vote. In today’s increasingly urban, mobile society, poll workers are no longer likely to recognize everyone who comes to the polling place, so it’s reasonable to require voters to present the same sort of identification they have to present for all sorts of other routine activities. Not because we’ve been plagued by fraud. Simply as a precaution. Going forward.

What always troubled me — and, it turned out, federal judges — was the punitive way the law was written: without any consideration that there are people in our state — not as many as critics believe, but not an insignificant number — who are S.C. citizens, who have been voting for decades, who do not have any of the state-approved photo ID cards and who would have a difficult time getting one. They tend to be older, from the era when many people —particularly poor people, particularly black people — were born at home.

It would have been easy enough to grandfather them in to the law. After a few years, they all would have died, and the law would have covered everyone, without depriving any legitimate voters of the right to vote.

When the Legislature declined to do that, a federal court made the law much, much more permissive than what I believe the Legislature could have gotten away with if the law’s supporters had been willing to compromise just a little bit. For instance, the court noted approvingly that a 2005 federal commission co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter recommended that, after a two-election grace period, all voters should be required to present a photo ID . But the Legislature wouldn’t include that sort of temporary grace period, so now there’s a never-ending grace period.

As the court explained in its October 2012 order: “At first blush, one might have thought South Carolina had enacted a very strict photo ID law. Much of the initial rhetoric surrounding the law suggested as much. But that rhetoric was based on a misunderstanding of how the law would work. Act R54, as it has been authoritatively construed by South Carolina officials, does not have the effects that some expected and some feared.”

So, for the question of whether poll workers know the law, I can say with great confidence that they know it at the Meadowfield precinct. Elsewhere, it appears to be hit and miss.

This story was originally published June 24, 2014 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Do SC pollworkers know the law they’re enforcing?."