Republican lawmakers and witnesses who testified in support of the bill said state-issued photo IDs would be “one more tool” clerks could use in the work of securing elections against fraud. They argued that Americans use photo IDs to conduct the commonplace business of their lives, to travel, do banking, visit the doctor, buy alcohol, for example, and that voting is at least as important as those everyday activities.

Democrats pointed out that photo ID laws create obstacles to voting and only work to prevent polling-place voter impersonation, a problem that they said statistically does not exist. They cited the five-year Bush justice department effort to root out voter fraud that found only 86 instances in a period where 300 million votes were cast, the fraud overwhelmingly stemming from polling place and registration mistakes and not from conspiracy to influence voting results.

Witnesses opposed to the bill pointed to studies that suggest it is not voter fraud that presents the real challenge to the integrity of U.S. elections, but election fraud– where ballot boxes are stuffed, votes are hidden, electronic voting machines tampered with, for example.

Like other witnesses, AARP spokesman Dennis Valentine reminded the committee that, although it might seem impossible to middle class Americans between the ages of 21 and 61, acquiring and keeping an updated photo ID can be difficult for whole demographic categories of citizens, including seniors.

“Maybe you have one at 65,” he said “but not at 75 or 85. You’re not driving anymore. And if you don’t have one, it’s a long tough process to get one.”

Linda Olson, an attorney with Colorado Legal Services’ Collaborative ID Project, said the project has helped secure IDs for 10,000 Coloradans in the last three years and turned away hundreds of others. She described the red-tape tangles that plague the efforts of the project and the fees that mount into the hundreds of dollars for people working in ID limbo with missing birth certificates and unmatching social security numbers and competing official and semi-official names.

Democratic members of the committee asked supporters of the bill, including two county clerks, for evidence that polling-place impersonation was being perpetrated in the state in a way that would justify the new law.

Arapahoe County Clerk Nancy Doty said she thought there had been a handful of likely examples in the eight years she has been clerk. She recalled that one man voted for his father and a woman had voted twice.

Blogger Kelly Maher testified as she has in the past to what she characterized as Colorado’s lamentable “low bar” voter ID requirements. She waved in the air the home-computer printout of an electric bill she uses as her voter ID. “This is it,” she said with dramatic irony. She asked the committee members to pass the photo ID bill as a way to fight disillusionment among citizens who fear their votes are being compromised.

Maher’s testimony perhaps unintentionally highlighted a key dynamic running under the issue.

Although no committee member nor witness in favor of the bill delivered evidence that polling-place impersonation occurred here in a way that might influence election results, they sparked serious discussion about polling-place voter impersonation fraud. The effect was that, at some point, the argument turned almost imperceptibly from being about the need to battle polling-place fraud to the need to battle the perception that polling places are vulnerable to fraud, a perception spurred at least in part by the steady push year after year to pass photo ID laws.

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(Photo/mystereys, Flickr)

The clock is ticking down until Colorado’s big day. And with the John McCain campaign all but pulling out of the state as Barack Obama pushes forward, the result of the November election in Colorado may be coming into focus.

Unfortunately, when it comes to election administration in Colorado, things are getting muddier and muddier by the day. In our election bungle roundup last week, we guided you through the week’s most important news: national groups slamming Secretary of State Mike Coffman on his voter registration policy, Attorney General John Suthers backing Coffman in his recent voter purge, El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Bob Balink further disenfranchising student voters, and more. Read on to for the latest foul-ups:

Come one, come all! Vote early! Vote by mail! Oh, wait…

This Monday kicked off the start of two weeks of early voting in Colorado. Long-touted as the antidote to massive Election Day lines, Monday’s early vote went smoothly, according to The Rocky Mountain News. But not so with another type of voting. County clerks across the state found their offices gummed up with mail-in ballot requests and unable to quickly deliver ballots to waiting voters. In Adams County, election workers were put on mandatory 12-hour shifts this week to deal with the avalanche of mail-in forms, as the Rocky reported. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State’s office added an election tracker on its Web site complete with the ever-increasing number of mail-in ballot requests. Now you can watch the inundation unfold in real time.

Think you’re registered to vote? The answer depends on where you live.

A few county clerks got feisty this week by accepting some incomplete voter registrations onto the rolls. According to the Rocky, Jefferson and Larimer counties absorbed registrations with the so-called “check box” issue, in which applicants wrote down the last four digits of their Social Security numbers but neglected to check a box indicating as much. Other counties have been rejecting these forms until the applicant cures his or her registration, per the secretary of state’s wishes. Coffman, who has ignored voting experts’ pleas to change his policy, issued a wrist-slap to the clerks, telling them to follow the law, according to The Denver Post. Meanwhile, Denver County has pulled out all the stops to get “check box” voters to cure their forms before Election Day. The most recent attempt? Robocalls.

A little extra oversight on Election Day? Not for those of you in Arapahoe County…

Voting rights experts aren’t the only ones fretting over Colorado’s ability to pull off the national election. Early this week, U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Democrat who represents Arapahoe County, sent a letter to Secretary of State Coffman asking him to pick an independent election monitor to survey the Arapahoe County polls on Election Day, according to The Denver Post. Perlmutter specifically worried that the county — which will use electronic voting machines this election — is unprepared to deal with machine failures, and he asked Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder Nancy Doty to stock paper ballots at the polls. Traditionally Republican Arapahoe County has seen a huge increase in Democratic registrations this year, and Perlmutter said he wants things to go smoothly on Election Day. But in keeping with his no-way-no-how reputation, Coffman rebuffed Perlmutter, saying in a letter that he won’t post a monitor “unless there are concerns submitted to my office that election laws in Arapahoe County are not being adhered to,” according to the Rocky.