A fresh article from the Washington Post titled ‘Getting a photo ID so you can vote is easy. Unless you’re poor, black, Latino or elderly’ purports to establish that voter ID laws are inherently discriminatory against minorities. Towards that end, the bulk of the article presents the hardship stories of three prospective voters who struggled to obtain a state-issued I.D (all seniors, incidentally, ages 65, 72, and 85). Another insinuation? These are all voters Republicans would love to keep away from the voting booth.
The article essentially parrots the Left’s case against ID laws, that requiring an I.D is a particular affront to minorities. Why? How little do liberals think of minorities that they honestly believe something as simple as obtaining an I.D can be too much for minorities to handle?
You need an I.D to donate blood, does that mean that your local blood bank is trying to suppress the amount of blood they get from minorities?
Glaringly absent from the story is that the countries of origin of most Latino voters and their families have strict voter I.D. laws, precisely because political parties by nature don’t trust each other and strict voter I.D. laws and voting processes are the only ways to ensure that citizens trust and respect electoral outcomes.
Let’s get one thing clear: the cornerstone of the American democratic process is one person, one vote. To safeguard that process, the system of registering to vote was instituted in order to assure that you are who you say you are before casting your vote on the direction of your community, state or the entire country.
As a matter of fact, ensuring the integrity of the electoral process is what voter ID laws, which are colorblind and apply to everyone equally, are all about. Also ignored in the Washington Post article is that there are a whole slew of much less important activities and benefits, such as getting cell phone service or applying for Medicaid or Social Security, that also require identification for eligibility.
In addition, the article makes light of the fact that you’re eligible to vote with a concealed-carry handgun license, but the same Washington Post consistently insists on strict requirements for obtaining one.
Make no mistake, there is a self-serving agenda behind the Left’s anti-voter I.D. efforts. They would brazenly have us undermine the integrity of our election process in order for their candidates to benefit from added votes. And they are utilizing the tried and true method of portraying minorities as the victims of I.D. laws as the way to pull heartstrings, yet again.
Below are excerpts from the May 23 Washington Post article ‘Getting a photo ID so you can vote is easy. Unless you’re poor, black, Latino or elderly’
SARI HORWITX, STAFF WRITER, WASHINGTON POST: Supporters say that everyone should easily be able to get a photo ID and that the requirement is needed to combat voter fraud. But many election experts say that the process for obtaining a photo ID can be far more difficult than it looks for hundreds of thousands of people across the country who do not have the required photo identification cards. Those most likely to be affected are elderly citizens, African Americans, Hispanics and low-income residents.
A federal court in Texas found that 608,470 registered voters don’t have the forms of identification that the state now requires for voting. For example, residents can vote with their concealed-carry handgun licenses but not their state-issued student university IDs. Across the country, about 11 percent of Americans do not have government-issued photo identification cards, such as a driver’s license or a passport
But former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. has called the costs associated for voters seeking a photo ID a “poll tax,” referring to fees that some Southern states used to disenfranchise blacks during the Jim Crow era of laws enforcing racial segregation between the late 1800s through 1965.
“Voters who have to show ID constantly in their everyday lives certainly don’t see ID as a problem,” said Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “It is a common-sense, basic requirement needed to ensure election integrity, which is an essential part of free and fair elections.”
Opponents say that the laws were designed to target people more likely to vote Democratic.
A recent voter-ID study by political scientists at the University of California at San Diego analyzed turnout in elections between 2008 and 2012 and found “substantial drops in turnout for minorities under strict voter ID laws.”
“These results suggest that by instituting strict photo ID laws, states could minimize the influence of voters on the left and could dramatically alter the political leaning of the electorate,” the study concluded.
The question of whether photo IDs are difficult to obtain has become central to cases across the country, where government and civil rights lawyers are challenging new state laws.
Many of the residents struggling to obtain a valid photo ID are elderly and poor and were born in homes rather than hospitals. As a result, birth certificates were often lost or names were misspelled in official city records.
