ALBANY — State lawmakers are passing bills aimed at making it easier for people to register to vote, and one north country senator thinks that should come with a voter identification requirement at the ballot box.
On Monday, lawmakers in the Senate considered and approved a bill written by Sen. Mike Gianaris, D-Bronx, that extends automatic voter registration to anyone registering or re-registering for Medicaid or seeking any documents from the state Department of Motor Vehicles.
While the Gianaris bill also allows for people to opt out of these auto-registrations, Sen. Mark C. Walczyk and his Republican colleagues are worried it could lead to people who are ineligible to vote ending up on voter rolls.
“The bill we were debating would make it more easily available for non-citizens and non-New Yorkers to accidentally register to vote,” Walczyk said.
So he offered a bill up as an amendment to the legislation, without Gianaris’s support. That’s called a hostile amendment. The bill Walczyk offered as an amendment would require that a New York or federally issued license or non-driver ID, a U.S. passport, a valid student ID from a recognized educational institution, a government-issued medical card or a military ID be presented when a voter casts their ballot. The requirement would only apply to those voting in person, and someone without a valid ID available would be allowed to cast an affidavit ballot that would later be verified.
The bill died along party lines in the Senate. The full standalone legislation that Walczyk has written was voted down last year by the Elections Committee, of which he is a member, and has been referred there without action again this year.
Walczyk said that the bill isn’t about putting up barriers to voting, but to ensure that there’s trust in and respect for the process.
“People want to have faith that their vote is going to count, they want it to be easy to register to vote, they want it to be easy to vote, they also want to make sure that someone who shouldn’t be voting, or wants to commit fraud, is not able to do that,” he said.