The Marshall County auditor isn't waiting for the issue of voter ID to settle itself in the legislature.
She's being proactive.
Secretary of State Matt Shultz again proposed a bill that would overhaul Iowa voter identification requirements Thursday morning. If state legislators pass the bill into law, the measure would be enacted over two years.
Dawn Williams, Marshall County auditor, doesn't want to wait that long. She wants the best of both worlds. And she wants it sooner than two years.
"Voter ID has proven, in Iowa, to be a politically divisive issue," she said. "Probably the most divisive county auditors have been involved in since I have been an auditor, which is 23 years."
Proponents of requiring voter ID at ballots say it will prevent voter fraud and consequently prevent ineligible voters from stealing an election.
"The real point of this law is to make sure you are who you say you are when you come to vote," Shultz said Thursday before the State House and Senate, adding, "We're not trying to disenfranchise or keep people from voting. We want security and integrity in our elections."
However, many critics of the process such as Ben Stone, executive director of the Iowa American Civil Liberties Union, claim that disenfranchising voters is exactly what such legislation does. Requiring ID deters many voters, they say, particularly those who are poor, elderly or immigrants many of whom do not have identification.
Voting is a Constitutional right, Stone said, and any barriers to citizens exercising that right should be opposed.
Stone says that those demographics tend to vote Democrat, and that requiring ID at the polls is a bit of skullduggery devised by Republicans designed to dissuade voters who would vote against them. Besides, they say, cases of voter fraud are incredibly rare.
"This is an effort to create a solution to a nonexistent problem," he said. "There is no credible evidence that this is necessary ... there are not many people who are willing to risk going to jail to give their candidate one extra vote."
In the digital era it seems that any problem that can be solved with technology. In Williams eyes, problems with voter ID are no different. Marshall County has already begun working out, what Williams said, is a more efficient system that addresses the concerns of both Democrats and Republicans.
Precinct Atlas is a computer program that provides precinct officials with a list of all eligible voters and walks them through the process of signing in voters at election time, Williams said.
"I have decided not to wait for policy to pass," she said. "I want to go about making sure Marshall County voters have as a secure election as possible."
Essentially, Williams said, the program is like having two lanes at a grocery store - an express lane and a regular lane. Those who have their IDs ready can get in and out more quickly and efficiently, while voters without IDs simply go through the standard procedure, which admittedly takes slightly longer than the expedited process, but no longer than without Precinct Atlas.
Marshall County was a pilot group and already tested the program during the Republican Caucus by borrowing some ID scanners from Cerro Gordo County.
During the Republican Caucus, Williams said, without public notice 70 percent of voters who turned out had their IDs ready, which is a notable increase from the zero percent who usually do.
And while the Secretary of State's proposal might have been met with tepid responses from the state legislature, Williams said the response to Precinct Atlas has been anything but. Everyone who turned out at the Republican Caucus loved the system, she said, which might be expected considering Republicans tend to favor bills such as those proposed by the Secretary of State anyway.
Pete Rogers, chair of the Marshall County Republicans, said although Precinct Atlas seems to streamline the voting process, he has reservations about its ability to keep elections secure. He said a great deal of the voting process is predicated on the assumption that voters are honest.
All that is required to obtain registration is that the would-be voter promise not to commit fraud, he said.
"Those people not willing to provide ID are those most likely to commit fraud ... if someone is willing to commit a fraud, their promise is meaningless anyway," he said. "I don't know that [Precinct Atlas] enhances voter security in any fashion."
Still, Williams said Precinct Atlas is also a great boon to precinct officials, allowing them to have confidence that they are doing voting procedure properly. Having sampled the program during the caucus, Williams said precinct officials can hardly imagine the voting process without Precinct Atlas.
"If I took it away now, they are likely to revolt," she said. "It takes the pressure off them."
Whether Marshall County will have Precinct Atlas in place for the 2012 general election depends on how budget issues pan out, Williams said.
A great deal of work goes into tallying votes and making sure every voter is accounted for, and county officials just want to make sure every voter is treated correctly in accordance with the law in a uniform, nondiscriminatory way.
Precinct Atlas helps with that, Williams said. "It's like balancing a check book," she said. "It use to take like three weeks to tally votes. Now it takes like half an hour. It's crazy simple."
Regardless of the mechanism or their stance on requiring ID at the ballot, most people believe the voting process could be improved.
"When you think about it, most of the ways voting is done ... it's very antiquated," Stone said. "There is a lot of things that can be done by competent auditors."
