Letter to the Editor: Asked for photo ID at New Utrecht High School

This letter to the editor was sent to four Brooklyn newspapers on August 25, 2005.

On the morning of Election Day, Nov. 2, 2004, I was asked by an auxillary police officer for photo ID in order to enter the polling place at New Utrecht High School. I felt this was a violation of privacy and inconsistent with Board of Election policy. I believe that IDs should be properly handled by poll workers. I'm sure hundreds of voters in Bensonhurst were asked for photo ID that day and that some of them were turned away from the polls.

It could happen again. Two important events, the mayoral primary on Sept. 13 and the general election on Nov. 8, are coming up soon. The photo ID policy, established by New Utrecht High School and tolerated by the Board of Elections, could have an effect on City Council races, the mayoral primary and election as well as the MTA bond question involving the Second Avenue subway and other capital projects involving billions of dollars.

Hundreds of voters, many of them seniors who lack photo ID, could be denied the right to vote if they cannot enter the polling place, for to be denied access to the polling place is to be denied the right to vote as there is no alternate way to vote on Election Day.

The photo ID policy, if allowed to stand, would appear inconsistent with both the Help America Vote Act and the Board of Elections' own policy. The Help America Vote Act requires that all first-time voters who registered by mail after January 1, 2003 be required to show their driver's license or their Social Security card in order to vote. The Board of Elections' implementation of HAVA is to allow those who registered before 2003 and all other voters not to show their ID; for first-time voters the policy is to be as least restrictive as possible. New Utrecht High School says that photo ID is required to maintain school safety. As the Board of Elections' Brooklyn office wrote in an e-mail, "It is the School's policy that all visitors to their facility, whether it is Election Day or not [sic] be required to show ID when entering the site...this is the School's policy. This policy has nothing to do with HAVA or the Board of Elections, but [with] the safety of the School and it's [sic] students."

I ask New Utrecht High School to do the seniors and other voters a favor and modify the photo ID policy on Primary Day and Election Day. The policy doesn't appear to be working; in the past several months, one student shot himself in the leg and another was stabbed. If the school wanted to enhance school safety while securing privacy, they would have installed metal detectors.

As for me, if I don't see any change by Sept. 13, I may have to sit out the primary.