The battles over voter ID and other election-integrity issues suffer from a common and inconvenient hang-up: the combatants don’t fight on the same territory. The conversation participants don’t speak the same language and the terms employed don’t mean the same thing to their users and interpreters.  You would think that because the debate involves a legal battle as much as a political one there would be some consensus on the stakes and parameters of the fight.

Alas, that is not so.

 The definitions advanced to attack or defend a position are just more rhetorical arrows in the quiver.  One can win the argument before it begins simply by controlling the definitions.

 Consider the fight over the existence of voter fraud. Opponents of voter ID and other restrictions argue that voter fraud does not exist, and that voter ID is a solution in search of a problem.  Proponents disagree.  Opponents, however, make their claim by first narrowing what qualifies as voter fraud. They define voter fraud as, essentially, successful criminal prosecutions for in-person voter impersonation at the polls. Such fraud only occurs when a wrongdoer is caught and successfully prosecuted for pretending to be someone else at the polls.

Ignoring for the moment the potentially faulty logic (impersonation fraud is not a problem because prosecutions are rare, and prosecutions are rare because voter fraud it is not a problem), the narrow definition still suffers from at least two major problems: (1) the general public—including most lawmakers—have something broader in mind when thinking about “voter” or “election” fraud; and (2) absent a way to check identification, it is almost impossible to recognize (much less prosecute) impersonation fraud.

To be fair, the opponents can rely on their limited definition by noting that ID laws will only guard against impersonation fraud. But the limits of voter ID laws are not so well settled. Plus, lay audiences will likely miss the winnowed meaning. 

What’s more (and more important), opponents are not so restrictive when it comes to other claims that they make.  They certainly don’t limit instances of alleged voter suppression to successful prosecutions of vote suppressors only. They don’t restrict instances of alleged voter intimidation to actual criminal intimidators. They also don’t justify campaign finance restrictions on widespread convictions for quid pro quo corruption.  In those instances, criminal prosecutions of established crimes are not a required element to the claim.

 Put simply, opponents of voter ID narrow the definition of voter fraud as much as possible while simultaneously broadening the definitions of voter suppression. Doing so allows them two rhetorical attacks at voter ID: voter fraud never occurs; and voter-ID causes widespread vote suppression. To opponents, the laws fail one or both of the two attacks.

Fortunately, definitional game playing works better in the political area than in the legal one, as voter ID opponents repeatedly rediscover in court.

The battles over voter ID and other election-integrity issues suffer from a common and inconvenient hang-up: the combatants don’t fight on the same territory. The conversation participants don’t speak the same language and the terms employed don’t mean the same thing to their users and interpreters.  You would think that because the debate involves a legal battle as much as a political one there would be some consensus on the stakes and parameters of the fight.

Alas, that is not so.

 The definitions advanced to attack or defend a position are just more rhetorical arrows in the quiver.  One can win the argument before it begins simply by controlling the definitions.

 Consider the fight over the existence of voter fraud. Opponents of voter ID and other restrictions argue that voter fraud does not exist, and that voter ID is a solution in search of a problem.  Proponents disagree.  Opponents, however, make their claim by first narrowing what qualifies as voter fraud. They define voter fraud as, essentially, successful criminal prosecutions for in-person voter impersonation at the polls. Such fraud only occurs when a wrongdoer is caught and successfully prosecuted for pretending to be someone else at the polls.

Ignoring for the moment the potentially faulty logic (impersonation fraud is not a problem because prosecutions are rare, and prosecutions are rare because voter fraud it is not a problem), the narrow definition still suffers from at least two major problems: (1) the general public—including most lawmakers—have something broader in mind when thinking about “voter” or “election” fraud; and (2) absent a way to check identification, it is almost impossible to recognize (much less prosecute) impersonation fraud.

To be fair, the opponents can rely on their limited definition by noting that ID laws will only guard against impersonation fraud. But the limits of voter ID laws are not so well settled. Plus, lay audiences will likely miss the winnowed meaning. 

What’s more (and more important), opponents are not so restrictive when it comes to other claims that they make.  They certainly don’t limit instances of alleged voter suppression to successful prosecutions of vote suppressors only. They don’t restrict instances of alleged voter intimidation to actual criminal intimidators. They also don’t justify campaign finance restrictions on widespread convictions for quid pro quo corruption.  In those instances, criminal prosecutions of established crimes are not a required element to the claim.

 Put simply, opponents of voter ID narrow the definition of voter fraud as much as possible while simultaneously broadening the definitions of voter suppression. Doing so allows them two rhetorical attacks at voter ID: voter fraud never occurs; and voter-ID causes widespread vote suppression. To opponents, the laws fail one or both of the two attacks.

Fortunately, definitional game playing works better in the political area than in the legal one, as voter ID opponents repeatedly rediscover in court.