For those just stumbling for the first time into the issue of voter ID laws like the one that has recently been passed in Pennsylvania—and is now being challenged by the ACLU—the matter can be a bit confusing. Both sides are wrapping themselves up in the flag to defend their side of the argument. One side says it is protecting democracy by preventing fraud, making sure that the will of legitimate voters is not being overridden by those who have no right to vote, or are voting twice. The other side says it is protecting democracy by making sure no legitimate voter is denied the right to vote. Surely, both these are laudable goals, so you can’t settle the argument by saying that one or the other is wrong.

What you can do is do the math and see which side is more costly. Just how many phony votes are being created by fraud, versus how many legitimate voters are being deprived of a vote by voter ID laws?

The answer is: an infinitesimally small number. According to a study done by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, a rigorous examination of a controversial 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington State, in which allegations of fraud abounded, showed that voter fraud occurred .0009% of the time. That’s nine votes out of every million cast. It wrote, “The similarly closely analyzed 2004 election in Ohio revealed a voter fraud rate of .00004% [four in 10 million.] National Weather Service data shows that Americans are struck and killed by lightning about as often.”

A Washington Post article reports that, from 2002 to 2005, only five people were convicted for voting multiple times. In that same period, federal prosecutors convicted only 86 people for improper voting. And according to Ari Berman of Salon, in Pennsylvania there were only 11 instances of reported voter fraud between 2000 and 2008—eight of which were attempted by the same person.

In short, the number of known cases of voter fraud due to failure to uniquely identify an eligible voter, like those popping up all around the country including Pennsylvania, is vanishingly small. To be sure, there are other types of voter fraud that may tend to affect a lot more votes, like flyers and robocalls giving voters misinformation about voting times and places. Probably the most high profile such case in recent history was a gubernatorial election in Maryland in 2010. The campaign manager for former Republican governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. engineered about 100,000 robocalls that went out to Democrats late on Election Day, telling them they didn’t need to bother to vote because the margin for their candidate was already so large. He was convicted last year.

But a voter ID law wouldn’t prevent that kind of fraud, which the Brennan Center says is much more common.

How about the other side of the equation? Well, according to George Washington University law professor Spencer Overton, a former member of the Commission on Federal Election Reform quoted in a recent story in the Washington Post, “a photo ID requirement would prevent over 1,000 legitimate votes (perhaps over 10,000 legitimate votes) for every single improper vote prevented.”

Figures released by Pennsylvanian election officials week before last show that 758,000 Pennsylvanians may not have proper ID. True, some of those people will presumably be able get something by Election Day. But the number of threatened votes is on a whole different scale than 11 in eight years.

Even more disturbingly, it is disproportionately the poor, the needy, the elderly and the like who will suffer. The homeless may lack documentation to show residence. The disabled may have trouble getting to state offices to get state-sponsored IDs or wait in line for them. The very elderly may have trouble providing eligible birth certificates. In Pennsylvania, you can get a voter ID on the basis of a signed affirmation that you do not possess one of the required IDs—although you still have to provide two documents verifying residence—but for all these vulnerable groups, the hoops they have to jump through is utterly disproportionate to the effort the rest of us have to put in to exercise our franchise. There’s a name for that: “vote suppression.”

Opponents of the Pennsylvania Voter ID law have called it “a solution without a problem.” We think it’s worse than that. In the best of Orwellian traditions, these laws say they are protecting the franchise while in fact destroying it. We hope the ACLU prevails in its current suit. If not, we would encourage social service agencies and, indeed, just ordinary citizens to reach out to vulnerable neighbors who you think might be deprived of a legitimate right to vote by this law, and help them get the documentation they need this November. This url is a good place to start: www.dmv.state.pa.us/voter/voteridlaw.shtml .