JIMMY CARTER and James Baker recommend photo IDs for voting. This seems reasonable to me. I can’t buy a beer — even though I’m clearly over 21 — without a photo ID. I think we should dye people’s fingers purple, too, to prevent revoting.

Some people complain, but I don’t see a way around Will Wilkinson’s point that allowing unentitled voters to vote is just as bad as barring entitled people: “The strange thing is that the press seems to treat illegitimate votes as a kind of noise, a kind of tolerable if unfortunate democratic static, while intimidated no-shows are a travesty against all that is holy. Yet, and this should be obvious, in terms of the aggregative democratic procedure, an unnoticed illegal vote for one guy (in a two horse race) is EXACTLY EQUIVALENT to scaring off a voter for the other guy.”