Photo IDs For All Voters Have Deeper Implications
But somewhere between 13 million and 22 million Americans of voting age, most of them poor, get by without driver’s licenses, passports and other kinds of government documents bearing their pictures, perhaps because they do not have the money to drive, much less to fly.
Judge Posner seemed to think it a small burden to ask such people to get a photo ID in order to vote.
Indiana has the strictest voter-identification law in the nation, lawyers for the Indiana Democratic Party told the Supreme Court in July, but a handful of states have similar ones and more than a dozen are considering following suit. “The restrictive conditions imposed in Indiana are a harbinger,” the brief said.A few weeks ago, a federal judge in Georgia proved that prediction correct. Reversing his own earlier decision, the judge, Harold L. Murphy, allowed that state’s voter identification law to go into effect, writing that “the photo ID requirement is rationally related to preventing fraud in voting.” That is, of course, true so far as it goes.
Indeed, said Richard L. Hasen, an authority on election law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, “there has been a lot of talk about fraud but very little evidence.”
On the other hand, no one knows how many people otherwise inclined to vote would decide not to because getting a photo ID would be a hassle, though a report this month from the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, found that voter identification laws “largely do not have the claimed negative impact on voter turnout.”
The available evidence, thin though it is on both sides, does suggest that “the number of legitimate voters who would fail to bring photo identification to the polls is several times higher than the number of fraudulent voters,” Spencer A. Overton, a law professor at George Washington University, wrote in an article on voter identification published in the Michigan Law Review in February.
What is perfectly clear, though, is that the legitimate voters facing a new barrier are not a random cross-section.
“No doubt most people who don’t have photo ID are low on the economic ladder,” Judge Posner wrote, “and thus, if they do vote, are more likely to vote for Democratic than Republican candidates.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in a case that will raise the question of whether requiring a voter to have a government-issued photo ID will unfairly impact poor and minority voters.
So, there you have it! The so very subtle message here is obvious. The elite white male, in charge, has figured out how to restrict less mainstream voters who don’t drive or don’t have the need for photo IDs.
Judge Posner seems to have a confusing change of opinion about this issue? Or, is he just admitting to the REAL reason picture IDs would be required. The US Supreme Court will have a chance to rectify this whole scam, or will they?
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September 25th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
There are two sides to the coin as it is said.This could be a good thing,because it can those that have no form of ID something they can be identified by,say in an accident,buying cigarettes and so on.Although one might add what’s one more piece of ID, especially in this day and age of ID theft.The problem that arises is to what extent it will be used,is the goverment going to shoot someone if he or she votes one way or the other? No one has to be forced to vote or should be forced to vote if they choose not to do so. One has to realize that one becomes numbered at birth,-marked for life, so to speak, now cross-checking will be a lot easir, they can put a picture with the number, so what.Can a person hide these days, really,come on now,lets not be ridicules. Just think how much easier it woudld be to capture Osama Bin Laden if he only had a picture ID voting card, he would have been caught by now.We have a goverment that cares for its citezens, and having a picture ID they can say look how funny xxxxx looks, always wondered, now we know. Then again I could be wrong,can’t say I’m always right either.
September 25th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Paul:
We really have government ID’s already; social security numbers, drivers license. passports. Credit cards, banks, auto dealers have data collected on all of us. We are very far removed from the days of anonymity.
In Texas our drivers licenses have a magnetic strip on the back with all kinds of information. I think we should just utilize the drivers license as the standard ID for voting.
I think that the voting Id issue should have been long figured out. We should not even be considering voting ID;s this close to the primary season. This should have been done after the 2000 election. Congress seems to have made a bigger and grander mess out of a situation.