Voting and Identification Cards: Common Sense on the Right; Racist on the Left

by: Steve Yuhas

When former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker presented their recommendations from the Commission on Federal Election Reform you would have thought that the two men recommended that blacks be lynched in public.  With recommendations ranging from everything from electronic voting having a paper trail in case a recount is required to showing an identification card in order to vote – one would think the latter would be the least controversial.  In our culture of “if nothing else makes sense call it racist” that is exactly what Democrats and people like the ACLU began shouting when a common sense approach in stopping, or at least slowing, voter fraud was made.

The typical suspects filed suit in Georgia on Monday just as the findings of the Commission were being announced, “Photographic identification as a requirement for voting is antidemocratic and prevents people from exercising their fundamental right to vote whether proposed by the General Assembly of the state of Georgia or the Carter-Baker commission," said Daniel Levitas of the American Civil Liberties Union.  The suit comes as a response by the state of Georgia’s requirement that in order to vote that voters will be required to show photo identification – it was just coincidence that it came on the same day as the Commission report. 

What, exactly, is undemocratic about showing identification to vote and how exactly does it infringe on people from exercising that right?

It doesn’t, but it does one thing that Democrats have long depended on and that is it will stop people from voting who are either in this country illegally and therefore unable to legally vote or to vote multiple times in multiple places.

The Orlando Sentinel showed in 2004 that nearly 70,000 people (snowbirds as they’re typically known) are registered to vote in both a state in New England (usually New York) and a southern state where they winter and in many cases they vote in both places – once by absentee and the other in person.  In a place like Georgia that type of double voting does not really matter because elections are often decided on by large margins, but in a place like Florida where elections are consistently close; voting in New York and Florida as a member of either party could change the outcome of an election.

Carter and Baker spent the last four years looking at the flaws that have evolved as voting becomes easier and strict voter scrutiny goes the way of the horse and buggy.  Americans have no problem showing their identification cards to use a credit card, to board an airplane, to register for school to gain in-state tuition rates and for any other thousands of other reasons, but the idea of showing an identification card to vote has ruffled the feathers of everyone from former Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) who called showing an ID to vote a “modern day poll tax” to the Congressional Black Caucus’ Congressmen John Conyers (D-MI) and John Lewis (D-GA) who simply refer to the idea of showing ID as “discrimination.”

DNC Chairman Howard Dean put out a statement that said that the DNC was “concerned and disappointed that the Baker-Carter Commission…has seen fit to support a 'national ID card' that threatens to deny the right to vote to millions of citizens who are lawfully registered and eligible to do so."  Dean does not say how having people show identification will disenfranchise anyone and neither does anyone else opposed to the idea, but it takes an awful lot to get Democrats worked up over the same thing and since it is one of their favorite former Presidents (and colossal failure) who signed on to the idea there must be something that they would lose if the Commission’s recommendations were to become law.

And there would be!  Voter fraud has kept some Democrats (and probably some Republicans) in office for years passed their expiration date and close elections for federal, state or local office have often been decided by dead people or illegal immigrants.  All of that would stop if voters actually had to be qualified to vote and Democrats couldn’t have that.  For all the talk of the right to vote and the rule of law when it comes to elections – Democrats seem only to care that people who vote for them have the right for their vote to count; not people who vote for another party.

In California it is illegal for a poll worker to ask for identification in order to allow someone to vote.  During the 2000 election someone voted using my name before I did and when I showed up to vote I was told that I already voted.  I was forced to vote what was called a provisional ballot that would only be counted if my signature matched the signature at the registrar of voters.  The books of registered voters are open to the public and it does not take a genius to figure out that all one need do is give an illegal a name and address (all public information) have them show up promptly at 7am when the polls open and vote someone else’s ballot. 

The real voter is disenfranchised; not the fake and elections are swung to keep people in power who shouldn’t be.  Showing identification, like one is forced to do for any number of every day reasons, would stop the kind of massive frauds that exists today dead in its tracks. 

Don’t tell that to the people that it will hurt because they need voter fraud in order to maintain their voting majorities in places where votes are close (as in the city where I live) and where voting is easier than taking a movie out of Blockbuster.

The Carter-Baker plan has been demonized in one day more than a plan of any other kind in history.  All last evening there were people complaining that poor black people would be most affected, but most poor black people have identification cards and in places like Georgia, where the ACLU and Democrats are fighting the hardest, the state will give them identification for free.  The Commission plan calls for just such actions all over the United States and it would be easy enough to implement.

Amazing isn’t it - somehow poor black people are able to get around shopping and dining, but they can’t make it to the DMV or roving identification center to get what they need to cast a ballot?  You would think that would be a priority to minority voters who complain the loudest that their votes don’t matter, but when a Commission report comes out to ensure their vote counts and is not watered down by illegal ones – they complain about how it is going to happen.

When all else fails in stopping illegal voting (or just about anything else) cry racism and that is exactly what the left is doing with the simple notion that the United States simply ask people at the voting booth to prove they are who they say they are before they cast what could be the ballot that changes the outcome of an election.  I say if it is good enough to rent a movie or to use a credit card to buy groceries then it is just fine to force people to show an identification card if they want to vote.  Hopefully the Congress will pass and the President will sign a voting statue that follows the recommendations by this bi-partisan panel and voter fraud will begin to become a thing of the past.

Besides – the left consistently wants us to be more like Europe and the Middle East – try voting in any other country in the world without showing identification; you’d be turned away more quickly than you would be at Blockbuster.  If the left wants us to be like Europe we should be like Europe and they should embrace these recommendations and showing identification to vote is just one of the things they do to avoid fraud.  There must be something that Democrats know about voter fraud that the rest of us just suspect because they all came out with the typical liberal playbook moments after publication of the report.

When nothing else sticks – call it racism.  Unfortunately, the left has cried wolf too many times before and failed so it is quite likely that in the not too distant future identification will be mandatory to cast the sacred ballot that makes America great. 

I wonder what Congress and the states will look like after all of that is said and done – the color red comes to mind.

Steve Yuhas is a columnist and radio talk show host on Newsradio 600 KOGO in southern California.  He may be reached at steve@steveyuhas.com or www.steveyuhas.com