“Voter rolls that do not — and obviously cannot — accurately reflect the number of registered voters in a county open the door to potential fraud.”

The diversity of problems that can corrupt the election process, from inept management to multiple avenues of fraud, require multiple solutions – a fact that the “voter ID won’t prevent this problem” crowd often ignores. 

But the more inaccurate the voter rolls are, the more important the commonsense safeguard of photo voter ID becomes because, as the bipartisan Carter-Baker commission noted in its 2005 recommendation to adopt photo voter ID, “Election officials need to make sure that the person arriving at the polling site is the same one that is named on the registration list.”

Inaccurate voter rolls also exacerbate the problem of mail ballot fraud, which even the staunchest voter ID opponents say is where the “real voter fraud” occurs.   

Yet voter fraud deniers, taking their lead from Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, routinely fight both voter ID laws and voter roll cleanup efforts enacted by states working to ensure honest and fair elections that inspire public confidence.