More than fifty Vanderbilt University Law School students shared their lunch hour with Professor Gilda Daniels of the University of Baltimore School of Law as she shared her perspective and research regarding voter disenfranchisement, particularly through the use of voter ID laws. Professor Daniels spoke in the Renaissance Room at the Vanderbilt University School of Law on Thursday, October 26th, 2006.

Professor Daniels' lecture emphasized the limited risk of voter fraud that is being weighed heavily against the considerably greater risk of voter disenfranchisement that voter ID laws impose. In one example, she pointed out that in some states where voter fraud has been thoroughly investigated, there were between six and nine actionable cases of voter fraud (that is, six to nine votes were fraudulent). Conversely, voter ID laws, depending on their severity, impact the opportunity to vote for nine times as many African Americans as opposed to whites, as well as roughly thirty percent of those over age seventy-five.

Professor Daniels joined the University of Baltimore School of Law factulty this fall, and she was previously the Deputy Chief of the Voting Section at the United States Department of Justice.