Solving a problem that doesn't exist

Starting at age 18, Americans can exercise their right to vote for people whose vision and values they share. It's a hallmark of our form of government, an essential part of a vibrant democracy.

And it's a right almost universally exercised in accordance with state and federal law. Studies, including a 2007 report by New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, have repeatedly shown that voter fraud isn't nearly as widespread as some people claim. In fact, it's virtually nonexistent.

In 2008, for example, the U.S. Justice Department issued a fact sheet detailing the results of the Bush Administration's six-year campaign to find and prosecute anyone illegally casting a ballot. Between 2002 and 2008, federal officials charged 148 people with voter fraud; 102 were convicted. This, in a nation where 213 million are eligible to vote, and where nearly 124 million cast ballots in the 2004 presidential election.

More recently, the controversy surrounding the community organization ACORN has transformed into a rallying cry as proof of vote-rigging and fraudulent voting during the 2008 election. But while that organization came under fire for questionable and illegal methods of registering voters, it's not clear how many of those people, if any, actually bothered to vote.

There's a good chance they didn't. In 2008, nearly 40 percent of eligible voters didn't cast ballots.

Proponents of measures to tighten voting identification requirements here and elsewhere insist that the integrity of American elections is at stake. They've successfully pushed legislation accomplishing their mission in states across the country. Several bills, including at least two to require photo ID to cast a regular ballot, are making their way this year through Virginia's General Assembly.

That requirement may sound innocuous, since most Virginians already have a photo ID. But many of the poorest, the oldest, the disabled and the youngest eligible voters don't have a vehicle or a bank account and therefore may have had no need for a state-issued photo ID.

But they still have a constitutional right to cast a ballot.

Forcing them to spend hours traveling to - and sitting in - the bureaucratic purgatory of Virginia's Department of Motor Vehicles so that they can pay for an ID card to exercise that right is both unnecessary and a barrier to democracy.

It's also illegal. Approval of the measure will almost certainly guarantee that the U.S. Justice Department will intervene, as it did recently against a version approved in South Carolina.

Lawmakers could save Virginia the embarrassment by abandoning this effort now. With so few actual incidents of voter fraud in America in the past decade, the law is unnecessary and intrusive. Virginia's legislators should spend more of their time and effort working to solve problems that actually exist.