Your face is familiar, but . . .

Ohio’s much debated and litigated Voter ID law, enacted to protect the system from widespread voter fraud which simply does not exist, scored an early hit today when Rep. Steve Chabot, was turned away at his polling place because he didn’t have a valid ID. Chabot has been in Congress for 12 years, was a county commissioner and member of Cincinnati City Council before that, and, as his television ads have been telling us incessantly, he has been living in the same house for more than 20 years.

He’s probably the most familiar face in Westwood and the poll workers knew exactly who he was. But the driver’s license he presented listed his law office address, not his home. So on a day with lines of people waiting to vote, a person whose identity absolutely is not in question got sent home to scrounge up an old bank statement with his address on it so he could come back and vote for himself. I’m so glad we didn’t get defrauded.

It turns out Chabot shouldn’t have been turned away. After hearing similar complaints from around the state, the Secretary of State’s office issued a memorandum later in the day that a valid license is a valid ID, even if it doesn’t have a current address on it.

The Ohio law was the subject of a voter suit that was settled with a federal court consent decree last Wednesday that kept the ID requirement intact, but ironed out its uneven application in the state’s 88 counties and on absentee ballots. Critics of the law, myself included, viewed it as an unnecessary set of complicated rules that make it harder for those without permanent addresses – generally the poor and students to present acceptable IDs and vote. Those groups are generally considered to vote more heavily Democratic than Republican and the law was passed by the Republican-controlled legislature over Democratic opposition.

Ohio isn’t the only state with a well-known but poorly ID’d pol turned away at the polls. According to CNN, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was turned away at the polling place where he tried to vote near his home on Sullivan’s Island because he had left his voter ID card back in the state capitol of Columbia. Like Chabot, he was recognized, but denied because of the rules. Also like Chabot, he later obtained proper ID and voted.