Simple mistakes like the one that hampered a Lawrence resident’s ability to vote probably pose a far greater threat to the integrity of elections in Kansas than election fraud.

The story of Connie Finnegan was reported in the Journal-World earlier this month. Although she had registered to vote in Douglas County, when Finnegan went to the polls in November 2008, her name was not on the rolls. She was allowed to cast a provisional ballot. The same thing happened in August of this year when she attempted to vote in the primary election.

Finnegan wanted to be sure the situation was remedied before the Nov. 2 election so she explored the issue with the Douglas County Clerk’s office. About two weeks ago, it was discovered that, although Finnegan had never left Lawrence, her registration mistakenly had been transferred to Barton County.

A state system allows election officials to pull voting records from other counties when people move their registration. When a woman who had the same first and middle names and the same birth date as Finnegan sought to register in Barton County, a staff member there mistakenly transferred Finnegan’s registration from Douglas County.

The staff member also failed to notice that neither the women’s names nor their driver’s license numbers, which were on the records, were a match. The mistake raises serious questions about how many potential fraudulent votes would be blocked by a requirement to show a photo ID at the polls. High quality fake IDs would be difficult for poll workers to detect. If they took the time to thoroughly check every suspect ID, it likely would cause serious backups that would hamper the ability of perfectly legal voters to cast their ballots.

The issue of voter fraud and the need to prevent a problem that may occur a handful of times in each election has become a hot topic in the Kansas secretary of state’s election race.

Requiring people to show proof of citizenship when they register and a photo ID at the polls would create more hoops for both voters and election officials and result in considerable extra cost for taxpayers. If the Kansas secretary of state wants to enhance the integrity of Kansas elections, that time and effort would be far better spent trying to eliminate voting errors and ensure the security of the vote in counties that use touch-screen voting machines and computerized counting equipment.

Connie Finnegan had no intention of voting illegally. She just wanted to vote. Encouraging voter participation in the state should be a top priority for the Kansas secretary of state. Cases of fraudulent voting should be prosecuted when they are discovered, but instituting voting roadblocks for all Kansas voters in order to marginally increase the chances that a few fraudulent ballots will be caught is the wrong priority.