After 40 years of voting in American elections, 61-year-old Dean Shirley of Decatur, Ga., could be denied the right to cast his ballot because he doesn't have a photo ID.

"I'm registered, and they have the registration book right in front of them at the polls," he says. "Who else is going to come in and say they're Edward Dean Shirley?"

Georgia and Indiana recently passed laws requiring a government-issued photo ID for every voter, and 27 other states are now considering measures to tighten voter ID rules, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Georgia's law is awaiting the outcome of a federal review. Georgia is one of nine states that, under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, must have changes in voting rules approved by the Justice Department.

Wherever photo ID bills are introduced, they spark debates between Republican lawmakers who support stricter voter ID measures to combat voter fraud and Democrats who oppose these bills as attempts to reduce the number of older, poor and minority voters. In Texas, for example, one Democrat girded for battle against a photo ID bill by having himself fitted with a catheter for a marathon filibuster. The bill, which was blocked from a floor vote, would have required a voter to produce a photo ID or two other forms of identification, such as a birth certificate and a license for a concealed handgun.

Supporters say photo IDs will ensure the integrity of elections. "Until now, voters can get into a voting booth by picking up a library card out of someone's trash," says Georgia Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue's spokesman Heather Hedrick.

But critics say the requirement is unnecessary: Election fraud where one person votes in place of another is rare. A sponsor of the Texas bill could not cite one example of such fraud in that state. Nor did Georgia and Indiana pass their laws because of reports of people impersonating registered voters.

These bills, said Texas state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D, are "part of a national partisan push" to suppress voter turnout among groups "who tend to vote Democratic."

For a number of older Americans, rural residents, minorities and the disabled, requiring a government-issued photo ID erects a new barrier to a fundamental democratic right.

AARP's Georgia office, for example, found that more than 150,000 older Georgians who voted in the last election—when 17 forms of identification were acceptable—do not have driver's licenses and are unlikely to have other forms of government-issued photo IDs.

When Wisconsin legislators passed a photo ID bill earlier this year, Gov. Jim Doyle, D, vetoed it, citing its effect on some 100,000 older voters in the state.

Dean Shirley, a former Georgia cotton mill worker, is disabled because of lung disease and arthritis. He no longer drives and says he doesn't have a passport because he's only been out of the country once, when he was in the service.

But Shirley wants to continue to vote, so he asked a relative to take him to a motor vehicle office to get a nondriver's photo ID. They drove 45 minutes and waited in line nearly three hours to pay $20 for an ID. His number was skipped, and he left empty-handed. "I just don't see the right in that," he says.

Responding to complaints about the accessibility of photo IDs, Perdue announced the state would send a bus on the road to issue them. But a state official conceded that the hand-me-down bus would stick close to Atlanta because it might break down. Unimpressed, critics charged the bus was nothing more than a public relations gimmick.

A number of minority lawmakers say the photo ID requirement is a sly variation of the disreputable poll tax a handful of states once charged voters because they wanted to discourage poor blacks from casting ballots.

The photo ID is meant "to break the spirit of the have-nots," says state Rep. Gregory Porter, a black Democrat from Indianapolis.

Georgia and Indiana will provide free IDs for those willing to swear they are indigent. But Seth Cohen, an Atlanta attorney who belongs to an ad hoc lawyers' group opposed to the new law, says making people travel to motor vehicle offices, swear they are poor and wait for hours for an ID just because they do not have the identification that many middle-class residents take for granted is unfair and discriminatory.

"This chips away at a key constitutional right," he says.

Not so, says Jonathan Bechtle, legal analyst for the conservative Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Wash. He says, "The time has come for photo IDs," and his group is helping draw up model legislation for other states to use.

"Most people need photo IDs for so many things they do in daily life," he says, "getting on a plane, renting a movie—it makes sense to have that same basic security measure for something as important as voting."

Bechtle, too, has heard anecdotes about how hard it will be for some people to obtain photo IDs. "But a lot of those people I've talked to—elderly folks who don't get out a lot—are the ones who feel the strongest about voting," he says. "They've told me personally they would do whatever it took to vote. They want that added security."

The new laws in Georgia and Indiana are the most restrictive in the country; five other states ask for photo IDs but allow voters to use alternative forms of identification, such as a bank statement or utility bill, or swear out an affidavit of identity.

With the issue heating up, a number of nonpartisan groups, from AARP to the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, have entered the fray, arguing that ID demands should never be so onerous that they discourage legitimate voters from going to the polls.

"We are opposed to photo IDs because they are unnecessary and a burden," says Kay Maxwell, national president of the League of Women Voters. "This is a solution to a problem that does not exist."

"The biggest issue in America is facilitating voting, not stopping nonexistent voting fraud," says Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington who has testified as an expert witness in more than 70 redistricting and voting rights cases.

But Curtis Gans, director of the nonpartisan Center for the Study of the American Electorate, disagrees: "Do we have massive voter fraud? No," he says. "Does voter fraud exist? Yes. And voter identification could help protect against it." He cautions, however, that "the IDs need to be highly accessible and free of charge."

Democrats and the Indiana Civil Liberties Union have each filed lawsuits charging that the state's new law violates voters' rights. The Georgia law is likely to face similar challenges.

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