John Fund has written two books on the subject of voter ID and has written a recent column on “Winning the Fight for Voter-ID.” He criticizes the decision by a Pennsylvania judge that voter ID laws violate their state constitution.

The judge concluded that “the law had been implemented in a sloppy, haphazard way and that the state had not done enough to help provide IDs to voters who lacked one.” Opponents of voter ID won’t get much help from the ruling though, since it was a fairly narrow ruling unlikely to impact other states.

One troubling part of the ruling was the statement by the judge that “the state offered no evidence to support the claim that the law was needed to block voter fraud.” Of course, there is abundant evidence that voter fraud does exist. One Philadelphia city commissioner issued a 27-page report citing cases of voter impersonation, double voting, and voting by non-citizens.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC is from Pennsylvania and agrees that voter fraud has become a Philly tradition. On his program he explained how someone would call a voter and ask if he or she planned to vote. If they were not, all of a sudden someone with that name showed up at the polls to cast a vote.

A 2005 bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform issued 87 recommendations. One of the most important was support for national voter ID. This only makes sense in a world where we are required to show a photo ID to rent a video, cash a check, or board an airplane.

How easy is it to commit voter fraud? John Fund points to New York’s watchdog Department of Investigations that sent undercover agents to polling places and claimed to be individuals who died, moved out of town, or were sitting in jail. They found that most (97%) of the agents were allowed to vote. They voted for non-existent write-in candidates so that no voter fraud was committed in their case.

A judge in Pennsylvania may not think voter fraud is an issue. There is lots of evidence to demonstrate that he is wrong.