It is no surprise Democrats, led by Barack Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder are against voter i.d. laws. After all, dead people can't vote if you ask them to identify themselves. Voter fraud in every election is a concern, but with Obama's past ties to ACORN and Holder's abuse of Justice Department power, 2012 is looking like a battle for the ages when it comes to voting requirements and preventing abuse.
Michael Walsh explains why:
If you want to buy over-the-counter cold medicine at your local drugstore, chances are you have to show a photo ID to do it. Same if you want to get on a plane, rent a car or open a bank account. So why not to vote?
But to Attorney General Eric Holder, the idea is an outrage. In the name of “civil rights,” he’s declared war on a nationwide movement to ensure the integrity of the electoral process.
Just this year, eight states have passed new photo-ID laws; more than half now have some form of ID requirement for voting. But Holder has already sicced Justice’s Civil Rights Division on new voter-ID laws in South Carolina and Texas to see if there’s any “disproportionate impact” on minorities. He’s also objecting to reforms in “early voting” in places like Florida, which recently tightened its electoral window.
Liberals have long insisted that voter fraud is a “myth,” and voter-ID laws a plot to suppress turnout among “people who are more likely to vote Democratic, particularly the young, the poor, the elderly and minorities,” in the words of The New York Times.
Now that’s chutzpah coming from New York City, where the organized-crime ring known as Tammany Hall regularly and proudly stole municipal and statewide elections well into the 20th century with its army of “repeaters” — men who altered their appearances by shaving or changing their clothes so they could “vote early and often” — and other tactics.
Nor is it history. Just this week, the chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party resigned in the wake of election-fraud allegations involving forged ballot-petition signatures that are now under investigation.
Nor is it “merely” registration fraud. The Commission on Federal Election Reform, created after the 2004 election and co-chaired by Jimmy Carter and James Baker, uncovered examples of vote-buying, repeat voting and absentee-ballot fraud. As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in upholding Indiana’s voter-ID law in 2008, “flagrant examples of such fraud have been documented throughout this nation’s history by respected historians and journalists.”
So, while Holder intones that unfettered access to the ballot box “must be viewed not only as a legal issue but a moral imperative,” his real agenda is surely politics: Fraud generally benefits Democratic candidates.
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From this point forward, we will here the argument that "Republicans want to prevent minorities from voting and want to go back to the days of slavery. Republicans wanting you to show i.d. at the polls is proof! Minorities in poor communities don't have access to identification. They're taking away your right to vote."
So what is the conservative solution to this problem? To getting the very people Eric Holder claims do not have identification or a way to obtain identification? Local tea party groups should organize events where they go into the very communities Holder talks about and get these people a government form of an i.d. Whether it's offering a shuttle service to the local DMV, or educating people about how to obtain an i.d. on their own online. Holder will still fight voter i.d. laws, but at least he can't say there aren't solutions for people without identification.
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