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Are voter ID laws partisan?
I thought it was a good time to address this talking point with our off-year elections only a few days away. Voter ID laws ARE partisan but not for the reason many people suspect. Since 2011, 13 mostly Republican-controlled states, including Texas and Wisconsin, have introduced laws demanding voters provide a photo ID, such as a driver's license or a passport. A fierce legal battle is underway between the laws' defenders, who say the laws prevent voter fraud, and the Obama administration and civil rights groups which argue the restrictions are designed to discourage some groups from voting.
And that they do. Poor people and minority group members are much less likely to carry a voter ID than whites and middle and upper class people. Many of these people live in the inner city and can't afford a vehicle so they don't need a driver's license. They also don't have enough money to travel out of country so they don't need a passport either. But to call the laws racist misses the point. Even though Blacks and Hispanics are less likely to have a photo ID than whites are, the law is not about race, it's about votes, although many see that as immoral too.
In other words, since Blacks and Hispanics are less likely to carry a photo ID and much more likely to vote for the Democrats than the Republicans, Republican states are passing voter ID laws to give themselves a better chance at winning elections. The more Democrats you can keep away from the polls, the better chance you have of winning.
That's the condition of politics in this country in 2014. Both sides seem to be willing to do anything required to win an election, regardless of whether the candidate is qualified to do a good job or not. You never hear Republicans OR Democrats talking about the quality of their candidates, only the number of them. Numerically, the Republicans want enough fellow Republicans elected to re-take the U.S. Senate while continuing to maintain control of the House. As bad as governing has been since Obama became President, this would essentially stop governing from occurring at all. The Democrats won't be able to get anything passed due to Republican control of both houses of Congress and any and all bills passed by Congress will most likely be vetoed by the President. So even if the Republican Party DOES control both houses of Congress, they won't have enough votes to override a presidential veto.
The method behind the madness of voter ID laws is that they supposedly prevent voter fraud. Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe has said that it's important that people prove they are who they claim to be. So the question is, how much voter fraud is there and is there enough to overturn elections?
All the available evidence strongly says no. In 2007, a five-year Justice Department review found virtually no proof of organized attempts to skew elections. Earlier THIS year, a study by Loyola Law School in Los Angeles discovered only 31 credible instances of voter impersonation among the approximately 1 billion ballots cast in all U.S. elections since 2000. Robert Brandon, president of the Fair Elections Legal Network, said that "You can't steal an election one person at a time." (The Week magazine)
We don't face a crisis in Nebraska because 84.5% of the population is White, 7.5% Hispanic and only 4.2% Black and the state hasn't been carried by a Democratic candidate for President since Lyndon Johnson did it in 1964. But other states are due to have very close elections and polling guru Nate Silver has predicted that new voter ID laws will reduce voter turnout. That's what the Republican Party wants because it gives them a better chance to win elections. You would think we could at least be honest about our motivations but that's a quality most people don't have.
Republicans want voter ID laws in order to win elections, not to prevent voter fraud. But they won't say that and that's one of the reasons we have such little faith in our politicians. But we do the same thing at a personal level. Many people have discovered that it's more convenient and less painful to lie about something than to tell the truth so that's what they do on a regular basis.
If we don't demand integrity for ourselves, how can we expect it of others?