Missouri lawmakers back photo ID requirement for voting
The Associated Press
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Missouri lawmakers endorsed measures Tuesday that could resurrect a requirement for voters to show government-issued photo identification in order to cast ballots.
The photo identification requirement has been pushed by Republicans -- who now have even larger legislative majorities than they did five years ago -- as a means of guarding against voter fraud.
I swear, if these people--Republicans and the Republican Party--had their way, we would vote on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday nights (only one), at 3 am so as few could show for the polls as possible.
Think about it, since more than 90 percent of us work, why don't we vote on Saturdays? It would even be easier to get volunteers to run the polls, let alone voters. It makes no sense--unless you don't want large quantities of the population voting, that is.
The fact is, this will make it more difficult for Senior citizens, minorities, people with physical handicaps and the poor to vote and that is decidedly, absolutely not their voting demographic. This is just more of the same, where people with money and education are trying to keep the voting to and for themselves but keep out people who don't think or vote the way we do, so by gosh let's keep them from easily being able to get to the polls and vote. This is disgusting.
Not only is this ignorant and obnoxious, but for anyone who has followed voting laws out of the capital, it's part of a long line of such attempts at laws. Check it out, from The New York Times five years ago:
EDITORIAL
Missouri is the latest front in the Republican Party’s campaign to use photo ID requirements to suppress voting. The Republican legislators who pushed through Missouri’s ID law earlier this year said they wanted to deter fraud, but that claim falls apart on close inspection. Missouri’s new ID rules — and similar ones adopted last year in Indiana and Georgia — are intended to deter voting by blacks, poor people and other groups that are less likely to have driver’s licenses. Georgia’s law has been blocked by the courts, and the others should be too.
Even before Missouri passed its new law, it had tougher ID requirements than many states. Voters were required, with limited exceptions, to bring ID with them to the polls, but university ID cards, bank statements mailed to a voter’s address, and similar documents were acceptable. The new law requires a government-issued photo ID, which as many as 200,000 Missourians do not have.
As if that weren't enough, back in 2008, we Missourians were already given the notoriety for having "The Worst Voting Law in the Country": http://www.alternet.org/news/85198/
So let's see this for what it is. This is another of many attempts, down through the history of our country by various groups, to keep people from voting. They wanted to keep women from voting. They wanted to keep African-Americans from voting and now, with this, they can try to keep at least four portions of the electorate--again, Seniors, minorities, people with physical handicaps and the poor--from voting.
As if that weren't enough, back in 2008, we Missourians were already given the notoriety for having "The Worst Voting Law in the Country": http://www.alternet.org/news/85198/
So let's see this for what it is. This is another of many attempts, down through the history of our country by various groups, to keep people from voting. They wanted to keep women from voting. They wanted to keep African-Americans from voting and now, with this, they can try to keep at least four portions of the electorate--again, Seniors, minorities, people with physical handicaps and the poor--from voting.
That they would do this to claim to keep the ballot box safer is only more galling.
Next up for stupid out of Jeff City: government money going to private, religion-based schools.
Links: http://www.kmov.com/news/local/Missouri-lawmakers-back-photo-ID-requirement-for-voting-116277449.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/opinion/10thu1.html?_r=1
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5 comments:
pKeeping people who are inelegible from voting is at least as importent long term as keeping the wrong people from having guns. We need to take steps to avoid Chicago-style 'vote early, vote often, vote from the graveyard', and requiring reasonable id and proof of residency is neither excessive nor racist.
Honesty in elections is more important than ease--unless a large portion of your base is lazier than the opposition. If we can make voting easier without compromising security we should, but if inconvienience is necessary to prevent fraud we should accept it. This includes avoiding touchscreen voting machines without a paper audit trail built by a Bush supporter.
I am fine with early voting in person, I am concerned with excess use of mail in ballots because there is too much potential for fraud.
Okay, sure, I agree with virtually everything you say here but do have to point out that there have been nearly no or completely, utterly no instances of voter fraud that is prompting this action by the representative in Jeff City. No one in Missouri, it's been reported, is sponsoring any "vote early, vote often" or voting from the graveyard. It just hasn't happened and newspapers as well as the Secretary of State have said as much, repeatedly. There is no cause for this action other than keeping people from voting.
I go back to my original question, too, as a challenge for and to our representatives: why don't we vote on Saturdays?
And the "wrong person" voting doesn't kill anyone while the wrong person with a gun, does. It doesn't seem comparable. Besides, again, voter fraud, if it's happening at all--and most agree it doesn't seem to be--apparently happens in exceedingly small amounts as to not be something to be concerned about, to date.
Wrong person elected doesn't kill anyone? You don't remember Bush?
For those who think voter fraud doesn't happen--were any of them in Chicago? Or it only counts if it's Republican fraud? Or it has to be at the national level?
Fair elections are absolutely critical. IDing voters isn't the top concern, but it matters. Top current concern is the push for computerized voting machines with awful security--which describes most of them used in the US.
touche'. good point, with Bush but in this case, I was speaking more of local and state leaders, in my defense.
Hard data: there are virtually no instances, nationwide, of voter fraud that have created real problems in elections. The worst we had was the stolen election of 2000--and possibly 2004--and that wasn't done by the voters themselves at the polls, but by the leaders of the political party.
I agree with your statement "Fair elections are absolutely critical", naturally but this whole issue is a red herring, so to speak. It's just not a problem of any magnitude at all. Anyone can deny this but the fact is, these attempts at voter ID are further, clear, strong attempts by the Republican Party to keep fewer people from voting. The computerized voting machines are a problem, yes, but a completely different and valid issue.
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