While 2007 was not an election year, there was plenty of action in the voting world nonetheless.

This was the year that finally saw the myth of voter fraud at the polling place revealed for what it is and has been: an excuse to pass laws that would exclude some groups of voters from the process. Unlike many other policy areas, this was one area where the power of Congress was in full view, as committees publicly called out many of the biggest actors in the disenfranchisement business. And at the highest levels, some heads rolled.

The administration was revealed as having fired U.S. attorneys for failing to prosecute cases involving fraud allegations for which the prosecutors found insufficient evidence to pursue. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) was found to be suppressing research on fraud and identification, and later commendably began reforming itself.

But on the issue of voter fraud, the Supreme Court will have the ultimate say when it hears an appeal of a case regarding voter identification, which could from the perspective of voting rights be a far more important decision that Bush v. Gore ever was.

Voter Identification Law in Indiana

The Worst

The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rules in favor of Indiana’s draconian voter identification law. Judge Richard Posner, in justifying this position, writes that

the Indiana law will deter some people from voting. A great many people who are eligible to vote don’t bother to do so. Many do not register, and many who do register still don’t vote, or vote infrequently. The benefits of voting to the individual voter are elusive (a vote in a political election rarely has any instrumental value, since elections for political office at the state or federal level are never decided by just one vote), and even very slight costs in time or bother or out-of-pocket expense deter many people from voting, or at least from voting in elections they’re not much interested in. So some people who have not bothered to obtain a photo ID will not bother to do so just to be allowed to vote, and a few who have a photo ID but forget to bring it to the polling place will say what the hell and not vote, rather than go home and get the ID and return to the polling place. No doubt most people who don’t have photo ID are low on the economic ladder and thus, if they do vote, are more likely to vote for Democratic than Republican candidates.

The Supreme Court agrees to hear the appeal.

The Best

Petitioners, scholars of election law, members of Congress, historians, political scientists, and a wide array of groups submit brilliant briefs to the Supreme Court making the overwhelming case that the voter identification law is an unconstitutional violation of the right to vote.

The Department of Justice

The Worst

Voter Registration

U.S. Election Assistance Commission

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission continues to refuse to allow the author of this article to discuss her work on the agency’s report on voter fraud and intimidation and the ways in which the commission rewrote and deleted significant portions of it. It is revealed that Hans Von Spakovsky, current nominee for the Federal Election Commission and former senior official in the Department of Justice, tried to get the author thrown off the project for her previous writings on the subject, even though it was bipartisan project. The U.S. attorneys scandal, in which attorneys were fired for failing to pursue frivolous fraud allegations, erupts on the national scene.

The Best

The EAC eventually releases the author from the gag order and releases all documents related to the voter fraud and intimidation project. The EAC implements a number of positive measures to ensure greater transparency of the agency’s work in the future, such as increased posting of documents on the Web site and public input procedures. Von Spakovsky’s nomination to the FEC is blocked by Senators Barack Obama, Russ Feingold, John Kerry, and Sherrod Brown. The U.S. attorneys scandal reveals the ways in which the “fraud” claim is a fraud itself and has been used as a partisan, political weapon.

Military and Overseas Voters

The Worst

Studies reveal that overseas and military voters have been disenfranchised at an alarming rate over the past few election cycles due to the challenges of exchanging materials by mail in a timely and effective manner.

The Best

With the assistance of the Pew Foundation’s new Make Voting Work initiative (which begins distributing significant money for election reform projects), the Overseas Vote Foundation launches a new Web site with a variety of online services that any overseas voter can utilize that makes the process easier and quicker. One particularly useful service is an online voter registration form.

The Primaries

The Worst

The “frontloading” of the primaries worsens significantly, with up to thirty states voting on or before February 5, 2008. This leads to escalating campaign fundraising, a system tilted toward early frontrunners, confusion for election administrators and voters, and the potential disenfranchisement of some overseas and military voters.

The Best

For the first time in the history of the open nominating process, African Americans, Latinos, urban voters, and union members will have a significant voice in the nomination of the presidential candidates.

Tova Andrea Wang is a Democracy Fellow at The Century Foundation.