Tuesday editorial: “Get over it”
OK you poor, you elderly and you handicapped: If you don’t drive and don’t have a birth certificate or the money to obtain one and want to vote in Indiana this fall, you better grab your walkers or your wheelchairs and start collecting aluminum cans.
Thanks to a ruling Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court, you’ll need to scratch up some cash and write to the state where you were born to get a birth certificate. And then you’ll have to get a ride down to the drivers license office to get a state photo identification card.
Sure, you may have been voting for 40 or 50 years. It doesn’t make any difference. The court affirmed the right of Indiana to demand that you show a photo ID. The ruling applies only to that state, but that could change.
Indiana’s law is pretty close to one that a Missouri court threw out in 2006. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld that ruling, so for now the law is unchanged in Missouri. But in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Monday, the Republican-controlled Missouri Legislature could try to get a new photo ID provision passed before the session ends May 16.
House Joint Resolution 48, sponsored by Rep. Stan Cox, R-Sedalia, would amend the state constitution to require photo IDs at the polls. It would have to be fast-tracked to pass before the session ends. Then it would have to be submitted to voters at the August primary elections; if it passed, it would take effect for the general election in November.
That’s a lot of “ifs,” but when it comes to keeping legitimate voters from going to the polls, anything’s possible.
The bad news: Some people in Indiana won’t get to vote this fall. The good news: Nobody will be using a fake ID to vote. The bad news about the good news: Nobody’s been using them, at least not recently.
In fact, as Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the 6-3 majority in Monday’s Crawford v. Marion County Election Board decision, “The record contains no evidence of any such fraud occurring at Indiana at any time in its history.”
Thus, the Supreme Court has ruled that Indiana has a legitimate right to protect itself against a problem that doesn’t exist, even though doing so will deprive some people of the right to vote.
States began passing photo ID laws after the closely fought 2000 presidential election. It was part of a shrewd effort by Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s political adviser, to identify every possible Republican vote and suppress every possible Democratic vote. Republican-controlled state legislatures, including those in Indiana and Missouri, got the message.
Photo ID requirements are far more likely to hurt Democratic constituencies than Republican ones. Thus, had the photo ID requirement not been struck down in Missouri in 2006, it’s possible that Republican Jim Talent would not have lost his U.S. Senate seat to Democrat Claire McCaskill, just to take one recent example of a whisker-close election contest.
In his opinion, Justice Stevens acknowledged that it “is fair to infer that partisan considerations may have played a significant role in the decision to enact [the Indiana law],” but that the interest of the state in the “integrity and reliability of the electoral process” is nonetheless valid and not partisan.
Ironically, the court’s decision came the morning after Justice Antonin Scalia (who voted with the majority) was seen on CBS’s “60 Minutes” advising those who still are unhappy with the political ramifications of the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision to “get over it.”
Strategically, the plaintiffs in the Indiana case may have erred in attacking the law on its face; that is to say, without identifying specific individuals whose rights had been injured. But the result is that the Supreme Court has made voting more burdensome for many people who already have enough burdens.
Here is how to do it:
1. “Grandfather” in all those whose voter id and record has shown they have been active in all elections and whose signatures match up with the previous election. Take their picture and laminate it to their voter id card. While you are at it, get their thumb print and a retinal scan so that they won’t have Kit Bond drunkenly ranting about unfair elections.
2. Institute this new Citizenship Id Card, only in addition to the photo requirement add a thumb print, or a retinal print, or dare we hope your DNA sequence, on the back for double verification. Of course this will also allow the following class of citizens: ex-cons, gun-owners, registered sex offenders and others who are already validated as to their identity, to have their citizen participation to be monitored.
3. To show that you are serious about the rights of all citizens, make certain there is at least a one year process of implementation of the law before it can take effect — just to show that you are not “politically motivated”.
I am certain that with such codicils even the most fervent opponent of the “photo id” law will be mollified.
I left one thing out: all such laws can only take effect in an odd numbered year.
What person outside an institution can live today without a ID? The elderly you say? How do they cash a check? How do they get their Social Security? Their Medicare? The poor you say? How do they get their federal or state aid? Their WIK? Their food stamps? Their Medicaid? Each requires identification.
Might there be a person or people that are so far ‘off the grid’ that they not only don’t have any of those needs… none at all? I concede that there might be some small number, true enough. But if they can come forward to be, first registered to vote, then again to vote might they also be able to come forth and seek a free ID card?
No, I say that a good number of those don’t have a driver’s license or any other form of ID for one simple reason… that they do not exist… except on election day. And further that Ms Carnahan knows this.
Every victory of every statewide office holder belonging to the Democratic Party comes on the votes cast in Jackson County and in the City of St. Louis. This the Editorial Board knows. This City has seen vote fraud on a massive scale… in the resent past sending several people to prison for it. How many were not caught… for it has been going on for years beyond count?
My own Great Uncle voted in every election, local state and federal from 1952 through 1977 when the city made note that the building at his address had been torn down. I remember this because my Grandfather got a good laugh out of all this… as his older brother had died in 1949, AND was never a citizen of the US. He never voted while alive.
No fools are the Editorial Board… they know that if any sizable part of those voting in the city go away that no Democrat would very likely not be able to win statewide office again. And with an ID requirement that is exactly what will happen.
Despite Maida Coleman’s recent statement that she has never seen a dog come into a polling place to vote, it has been well documented that dogs and dead people have voted in the past, and there have been many indictments for election fraud. As an authorized poll watcher, I personally observed and reported the fraud that occurred at a north county polling place in the 2006 elections, with the obvious knowledge of the election officials. I have since decided that my time can be more effectively spent elsewhere in the election process.
It takes a photo I.D. to get a library card. Maybe that’s a non-issue since so few voters bother to read, but I see no reason at all why a photo I.D. should not be required to vote.
Those, such as the editorial board, who support voting without verification of identity or citizenship, demonstrate their disregard for the integrity of our democratic process. They apparently feel corrupt means are justified by their partisan ends.
The Democrat Party spends millions trying to convince voters to support their socialist agenda. If they are concerned about “disenfranchising” the infinitesimal number of voters lacking means to acquire photo ID, they could spend a couple of dollars for each and eliminate that phony problem. Thereby they could avoid “disenfranchising” legitimate voters whose votes are cancelled out by fraudulent ballots and ACORN born phantoms.
The Democrats could more than cover the cost of obtaining birth certificates and photo IDs for all their living undocumented voters in Missouri by using the savings from all the promotion and propaganda provided free by the Post Dispatch.
As a libertarian independent, I feel the same whether Democrats or Republicans try to corrupt the electoral process. Photo IDs are a very reasonable voting requirement. If only the editorial board demonstrated the same intellectual independence, your “platform” might have some credibility.
WSJ says it best
“Voter ID laws don’t discourage voting, but they do discourage fraud and increase voter confidence in the system. The Court’s common sense ruling protects the public’s belief that elections will be fair and honest.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120942822004851153.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
“Acorn’s efforts to register voters have been scandal-prone. St. Louis, Mo., officials found that in 2006 over 1,000 addresses listed on its registrations didn’t exist. “We met twice with Acorn before their drive, but our requests completely fell by the wayside,” said Democrat Matt Potter, the city’s deputy elections director. Later, federal authorities indicted eight of the group’s local workers. One of the eight pleaded guilty last month”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120943129695651437.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
Alas, tsquare, life is unfair. Votes in St. Louis city and Kansas City count the same as those in the suburbs and outstate. And as to the examples of fraud you and AJ cited, I would point out those were attempted fraud, discovered by election board workers.
And though our editorial page has been critical of Ed Martin’s tenure as Gov. Matt Blunt’s chief of staff, Martin did a good job as chairman of the city Board of Election Commissioners, purging the list of a lot of dead, bogus and phony names. Scott Leiendecker, who is now the GOP election commissioner in the city, also has helped professionalize the operation.
Thanks to the Help America Vote Act — passed after the Florida debacle in 2000 — there are now statewide voter databases. The Missouri Secretary of State reports little evidence of attempted voter impersonation.
If there’s a bigger horse’s butt on the bench than Scalia, I dont know who it would be.
All over the place with his stupid interviews. Permission to throw up your honor.
Not very smart, not very nice, this nervous giggle/laugh every time he’s asked a question he has no answer to, that comes from insecurity and knowing he’s wrong. Adults, like children, when they least deserve love is when they need it the most; but sometimes love will set you free and somtimes it wont. Must be in a lot of pain to act so badly. Not enough good love when he was young would be the most logical explanation. If dont love yourself, cant love others, no matter how smart you are. And denial not just another river in Egypt.
Scalia is a jerk. Many of us will NEVER get over the 2000 election. If the shoe were on the other foot and Gore had won, his great grandchildren would be hearing about how the Democrats stole the election.
I have always wondered why this issue bothers people when the evidence for abuse is so flimsy. The partisan aspect of it is blatant and embarassing for a nation that prides itself as a beacon of democracy. Obviously some folks don’t particularly care if others get to vote or not. They neither know nor care about the obstacles that the underclass faces every day.
If they are going to clamp down on voters like this, they need to make voting more accessible by changing election day from Tuesday to Saturday, so that working folk can get to the polls more easily.
RHarnack has the right idea. How the states implement their voter ID requirement will determine just what the agenda is. As it stands, it’s ripe for the usual political abuses, by the usual suspects.
“The bad news: Some people in Indiana won’t get to vote this fall….Strategically, the plaintiffs in the Indiana case may have erred in attacking the law on its face; that is to say, without identifying specific individuals whose rights had been injured.”
And yet, Missouri has a law that specifically identifies the injured party denied the right to vote in the statute, but the Post is strangely quiet on the subject. Under Section 566.149 of Missouri Revised Statutes, registered sex offenders:
“…shall not be present in or loiter within five hundred feet of any school building, on real property comprising any school, or in any conveyance owned, leased, or contracted by a school to transport students to or from school or a school-related activity when persons under the age of eighteen are present in the building, on the grounds, or in the conveyance, unless the offender is a parent, legal guardian, or custodian of a student present in the building and has met the conditions set forth in subsection 2 of this section.” http://www.moga.state.mo.us/statutes/C500-599/5660000149.HTM
This applies to polling locations on school property (and churches, cemeteries etc.). Thus, it is illegal for a rso to vote if their polling location is on or within 500 feet of school property, and minors are present. The exception noted will then allow a third party to determine ones voting rights.
And no, an Absentee Ballot cannot be used in this instance, as it would be considered vote fraud. The sponsor of the bill, Scott Lipke, was made aware of this apparent unintended consequence and claimed it would be addressed. That was in the fall of 2006.
Members of the Missouri Legislature have publicly condemned uncostitutional bills that deprive citizens of their rights, but apparently that opposition is limited to those they feel worthy of those rights. It’s a belief that has become contagious.