Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the new DNC head, has made another outrageous statement in an interview this week. Here she says that Republicans want to take us back to the days of Jim Crow.
Strange. When Debbie speaks, she seems intelligent. She seems articulate. It's the words that come out of her mouth that screw it all up.
The comment to Roland Martin was made in the context of Republican support for voter ID laws. Frankly, I don't understand why we should not have to show our ID when we vote. Not to do that invites voter fraud. What is racist about that?
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I have worked at the polls for two elections in the past year. The most recent occasion, I worked at the same polling site where I have voted for the past ten years. I haven't seen any fraud, nor any attempt at fraud. I've seen a lot of people who moved since last voting or registering, who therefore had to re-register, and to do so, they had to show proof of current address, often, but not always, a photo ID.
A few years ago, a poll worker at this set asked for photo ID, being under the misapprehension that it was required. Being an individualistic, libertarian-minded American citizen, I firmly informed her that I do NOT have to show photo ID in order to exercise my franchise, and I prevailed. I was amused therefore when the inspector in charge informed all of us that people no longer were required to show photo ID. (There had been no rule change - his misapprehension had been corrected). Even more amusing, the legislature was even then considering legislation to impose such a requirement.
Gary, you say you don't see why people shouldn't have to show photo ID. Standing alone, that makes as much sense as saying you don't see why people shouldn't have to attend church on Sunday, or else work Sunday at straight time. The burden is on you to justify an infringement on my exercise of citizenship.
Around 1962, a state department representative, briefing a congressional committee on U.S. operations in Vietnam, responded to a question about the democratic credentials of the totalitarian kleptocracy our tax dollars were financing, with the exclamation "I know we in America would never put up with having to carry photo ID - but its different over there!
I'm old enough to remember when Americans would never put up with being required to carry photo ID; you are too Gary. Why aren't the adocates of constitutional carry showing the same robust manhood about bureaucratic imposition on our sacred rights to vote?
Photo ID crept up on our culture insidiously, as private businesses exercised their privilege to refuse to do business without one, while offering services that have become so essential that we can't afford to do without them. Then government followed suit. Maybe our life is too crowded, anonymous, and mobile to do without them, but its still a sad development, which should be kept to a minimum.
I have yet to see any indication that voter fraud is taking the form of impersonating a registered voter -- which is the only form that would be curtailed by showing ID at the polls. It will hardly interfere with trunk loads of phony ballots being counted -- the line you are always running.
(Continued -- Blogger wouldn't take it all at once...
In order to REGISTER to vote, it is already required to show proof of current address, which is often provided by photo ID, although there are alternatives. I have seen many people come to vote who had MOVED since they last registered or voted, and THEY had to show proof of address all over again.
There is no credible doubt that the MOTIVE for proposals, inevitably from Republicans, to require photo ID, is that they expect it will discourage demographics considered likely to vote Democratic -- whether eligible or not. I think we may all be surprised how that plays out - I expect those least likely to have photo ID in order are those inner city folks who aren't even informed enough to know who is who, and produce some incongruously Republican percentages in the vote totals. But the MOTIVE is not in doubt.
Wasserman-Schulz is irrefutably correct that seemingly innocuous measures such as reciting the preamble to the state constitution as a literacy test, or poll taxes, have been used to bar disfavored demographics from voting. Further, it is a well documented fact that the most incorrigibly racist factions of the Democratic Party moved, between 1948 and 1980, into the Republican Party. You're not all racists -- my mother was a Republican before any of that happened. But the ideological core of your party is.
Where now are the Jacob Javits's of yore? Would you even let such a man into the party today? Wouldn't you call him a RINO? Your rush to dismiss Wasserman-Schultz's comments is a mix of sour grapes and guilty conscience, even though I really don't think that you personally are racist.
Siarlys,
Out here in SoCal we have had illegal aliens vote.
The way I see it, it's easy. If you know my name and address, all you have to do is show up at the polls before I do.
It may be simple, but it would also be identified with great vehemence every time it happened. It has not, in fact, happened. Do you have a head count of the number of verified instances when "illegal aliens" have voted? Or are you making a passing reference to passionate anecdotes that may or may not have some substance to them?
Assuming it is verified, and it may well be, how do "illegal aliens" manage to vote? Probably because the first thing any smart "illegal alien" does is get themselves an authentic looking photo ID. And then, among other things, they can vote.
Remember the movie "Battle of Algiers"? The French colonel who was sent in to take charge of a deteriorating situation told his staff "You can forget about all those checkpoints. If anyone has their ID in order, it is the terrorists."
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