Voter ID, a poll tax by any other name

THIS is why you don’t put limits on the fundamental Constitutional right of our democracy.

In the Texas suit, testimony has shown that about 1.2 million eligible voters—including disproportionate numbers of lower-income, black and Latino voters, who tend to vote Democratic—lack a photo ID that would allow them to cast a ballot. Some never had the necessary underlying documents, such as a birth certificate; others cannot afford the time or money it takes to track them down.

The lawmakers who insist that this law is needed never bothered to come up with evidence of any voter fraud. One former election official testified that in-person fraud is “almost impossible to do.”

Texas says it has made it easier to get a photo ID by providing for a free “Election Identification Certificate.” Apparently, Texans haven’t gotten the memo: as of Friday, fewer than 300 people statewide had managed to obtain a certificate.

Voter fraud is non-existent in the United States. I was reading some comments on-line last week and some guy referred to those against voter ID as the “vote early, vote often” crowd. Of course he has no evidence that such a crowd even exists.

But just for argument’s sake, how would that work? It takes me at best thirty minutes to vote. If I were to go around from precinct to precinct, and manage to come up with the name of someone who was actually on the voting rolls in each precinct and hadn’t yet voted, I could vote at best, ten to fifteen times on one election day. What would that accomplish other than being tiresome and pointless? Certainly if thousands of like-minded voters did the same thing, it could sway an election, but wouldn’t that be easily discoverable? Wouldn’t lots of people get caught?

Those are rhetorical questions. The only reasons for voter ID laws are to disenfranchise voters and elect Republicans.