In an early sign of Republican muscle-flexing in the reordered Alaska Legislature, an Anchorage House member says he plans to revive a dormant bill to require Alaskans to show a photo ID to vote. “It’ll be one of the first bills we hear,” said Rep. Bob Lynn, R-Anchorage, the chairman of the House State Affairs Committee. Voter photo ID laws in other states were hugely controversial in this fall’s national elections because poor, elderly and minorities are less likely than other voters to have photo identification like a driver license; those same groups are also more likely to vote Democratic. Judges in two states with strict photo ID requirements, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, held off enforcement of those laws, at least for this election.
Photo ID laws have been pushed as a way to prevent voter fraud by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national organization that promotes conservative model legislation.
In Alaska, where photo-bearing licenses aren’t even necessary to drive in 294 villages, towns and communities off the highway system, such a requirement could affect thousands of voters.
“That’s going to be depriving a lot of people from the opportunity to vote,” said Myron Naneng, president of the Association of Village Council Presidents in Bethel. “For the state to say that they require an ID in order to allow people to vote, that’s a bunch of BS — strictly BS.”
Lynn introduced a photo voter ID law, House Bill 162, in 2011. Even though it was referred to his own committee and the House Judiciary Committee, where he served as a member, it never got a hearing during the two-year life of the 27th Legislature.
“It didn’t get a hearing because I had other priorities,” Lynn said in a recent interview.
But even if Lynn’s bill had passed the Republican-dominated House, it would have faced a skeptical review in the Senate, where Democrats in the ruling bipartisan coalition were chairmen and vice chairmen of both the Senate State Affairs Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee.
Full Article: ANCHORAGE, Alaska: Alaska state lawmakers to push for voter ID laws again – Politics Wires – MiamiHerald.com.