If a New Mexico state senator’s proposal comes to fruition, voters will be lining up to have their eyeballs scanned next time they head to the polls.
Republican State Senator and Minority Whip Bill Payne’s measure, introduced Thursday, would require voters scan their irises, thumbprints or some other unique physical characteristic using biometric identification technology. The proposal would be an alternative to traditional voter ID, which is currently not required in New Mexico but is likely to gain traction in the state legislature this session because of the new Republican majority in the state House of Representatives.
“I thought I’d shake it up a little because I recently got an iPhone that uses a thumbprint identification that only I could open it instead of having to use a password or any other code to get into it,” Payne said in a video statement provided to ThinkProgress.
Payne has asked the secretary of state to study how much the proposal would cost and whether it would be feasible to use the high-tech machines at the polls. The state senator has said, according to a staffer who spoke to ThinkProgress, that the measure could be a money-saver because the state would need to hire fewer poll workers to conduct recounts or file provisional ballots.
While his plan to “shake it up” would no doubt be extremely costly, it also presents a number of privacy and data collection issues. Despite the fact that “everyone has an eyeball or a thumb that could be scanned for identification,” as Payne said in a statement,the threat of being subjected to scanning technology at the polls would likely intimidate voters and keep many away from the polls.
“Voters should not have to trade their privacy and biological data in order to participate in democracy,” Dave Maass, an investigative researcher with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told ThinkProgress.
While Payne is asking the state to look at the potential costs and feasibility, Maass said he knows the initiative would be “very, very expensive” and require more work than the state elections’ department could handle.
“I don’t have a whole lot of confidence in a system that’s so underfunded and so volunteer-driven to begin with,” he said. “You’re going to put upon them these highly technical systems and entrust very sensitive data to this system?”
Maass added that the state would have to monitor election volunteers who have access to the sensitive personal information and would have to secure the database where it stores the personal information, given the frequency of major data breaches in recent months.
“The idea of taking this data that no one should have -– no one should have a database of every voter’s private biometric material –- but even if you did create that, the ability to secure that and make sure it doesn’t get into the wrong hands — that’s a little more than an elections department is going to be able to figure out,” he said.
Other concerns arise from knowing the government will have a database of voters’ sensitive personal information. Most U.S. citizens, unless they work in certain fields or are convicted of a crime, are not required to provide the government with thumbprints, let alone iris scans. While a traditional voter ID requirement may drive away voters who do not have an official photo ID, biometric technology could drive away anyone concerned with the government having access to their personal data.
New Mexico is also home to a large number of immigrants. Nearly half of all New Mexicans are Latino or Asian and undocumented immigrants comprised 4.3 percent of the state’s population in 2010. While undocumented immigrants are not permitted to vote, thumbprint machines or other DNA scanning technology at the polls could be enough to scare away those with undocumented family members. As of 2008, 8.7 percent of registered voters in New Mexico were naturalized citizens or the U.S.-born children of immigrants.
What’s more, the expensive and invasive proposal is a solution to a nonexistent problem. New Mexico Secretary of State Dianna Duran claimed in 2011 that the state had a “culture of corruption” and asked law enforcement to look into 64,000 cases of voter fraud. But after launching an investigation, she issued a report which found just 19 cases of potential fraud. And last year, Harvard Professor Justin Levitt surveyed more than a billion votes cast in general, primary, special, and municipal elections across the U.S. from 2000 through 2014, finding only 31 credible instances of voter impersonation, many of which were never confirmed and prosecuted.
Nevertheless, Payne maintains that his proposal would be a better alternative to voter ID, which can hurt voter turnout. “Certainly this is the least intrusive way of [preventing voter fraud] that I’ve thought of,” he said in the video.
At least the Republican leader seems to recognize how invasive the technology could be. Since sending out his press release, he issued a corrected version removing all mentions of “DNA” from the proposal, leaving just the noninvasive technology that could read “irises, thumbprints and other biometric measures.”
And then there are the New Mexico residents who may be older or just may not trust the government’s use of biometric technology. “I always worry about technology,” said one Senate Republican Leadership Office staffer while trying to email Payne’s press release to ThinkProgress.