That is if you believe the Democrats when they say that Voter ID laws are discriminatory. See, the logic goes like this:
The very young, poor, rural, urban, minority Democrat citizens in our nation are disproportionally unable to obtain State ID. Further, this inability to obtain such ID is based solely on cost. State ID’s are prohibitively expensive.
I checked. Here in North Carolina you can obtain State ID by:
- You will need 2 documents from this category which provide your full name and date of birth. Listed below are acceptable documents you can use, provided they include your full name (including middle name)
- Drivers License from any state, territory or province of Canada.
- Birth Certificate
- Original Social Security Card
- School records or diplomas
- US Military ID
- Passport
- Marriage Certificate
- Court Documents
- Proof Of Social Security
- Social Security Card
- 1099 Form
- W-2 Form
- DD-124 Form
- Property Tax Form
- Pay Stub
- Military ID
- Medicare/Medicaid Card
- Proof of Residency
- Any document issued by the state of North Carolina or the federal government
- Bank statement or other corporate document
- Lease or housing contract
- Utility bill
- School Records
- Letter from homeless shelter
With some combination of these documents a resident of North Carolina can obtain a state ID. That and $10.00.
The burden to obtain an ID is not significant or overly burdensome.
So, anyway, back to Illinois. How is the state of Illinois now discriminating against the young, elderly, urban, rural Democrats in the state?
They are requiring the discriminatory practice of providing state ID to purchase…Liquid Plumber. Hat Tip Dan Mitchell
CHICAGO (CBS) – A new state law requires those who buy drain cleaners and other caustic substances to provide photo identification and sign a log.
…
The law, which took effect Sunday, requires those who seek to buy caustic or noxious substances, except for batteries, to provide government-issued photo identification that shows their name and date of birth. The cashier then must log the name and address, the date and time of the purchase, the type of product, the brand and even the net weight.
What possible excuse could the Republicans of the state make for such discriminatory practices?
State Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock) obtained passage of the new law following attacks in which drain cleaner was poured on two Chicago women, badly scarring them.
Truly unbelievable. Democrats feel perfectly okay to require state ID to buy Draino but not to vote.
Politics anyone?
Democrats are being completely disingenuous over this issue, to the point of ridiculous. Trying to play the race card only makes them more pathetic.
I can produce a number of those documents listed above to get a State ID even with me not being a true resident and not even being a full citizen. In my opinion there should be even more restrictions to protect a) the vote, and b) social privileges that come about because of it and these are far too lax. If the Dems had their way on this issue, I should be able to vote in the election AND apparently collect welfare AND park my ass in a hospital for a year for free while I’m at it.
Democrats are being completely disingenuous over this issue, to the point of ridiculous. Trying to play the race card only makes them more pathetic.
Yup.
And it’s only going to get worse as the primary ends and we enter the general election.
I know quite a number of LEGAL immigrants of a number of races and party affiliations, and many of us share the view that When you work hard to live and work in a foreign country legally you don’t want people who have short-circuited the system getting in ahead of you and making things worse along the way.
I think that point is moot, however. Everyone I know says this is “no big deal” because they/we all have the proper documentation anyways, which leads me to believe more that it’s just a Democratic ploy to try and (once again) paint Republicans as racist. Republicans try and treat everyone as “one” whereas Democracts want to single out and identify various classes of citizens – to me that’s far more bigoted and racist.
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/197809-rep-lee-says-gop-has-racist-motives-with-voter-id-laws
“Rep Lee Says GOP Has Racist Motives With Voter ID Laws”
This is why I can’t stand most liberals. They eat this $hit up.
for 240 years you could vote in this country without having to show identification. I have yet to see a justification for why they are now being required in many states. Where is the evidence of widespread fraud? Why are we making it harder to vote instead of easier to vote?
Where is the evidence of widespread fraud?
In Minnesota, Franken beat Coleman by 300 odd votes. More than 9x that many dead people cast votes. Because of that victory, the Democrats passed what many are calling the most significant bill in years; perhaps decades.
Why are we making it harder to vote instead of easier to vote?
I honestly don’t think that the barrier is that high. Further, it is my earnest opinion that if an individual doesn’t posses a state ID, it’s because they don’t want one.
Many problems with that argument:
For about 220 of those years “identification” was basically a piece of paper with a signature or some stamp on it. This produced two outcomes: it was hard to really prove legitimate identity on the one hand, and yet phony ID’s were easier to manufacture on the other.
Because of that, who really knows how much fraud has occurred in the system? Right now as I see it most of those fraud #’s are estimates, and they happen to be only estimates because these lax legitimacy and identification standards resulted in a lack of accuracy around any sort of fraud. In other words, you can’t accurately measure social security, welfare, medicare, or voter fraud because there are no accurate measures – it takes too much time and too much money under the old system, and by the time you can get truly accurate on what’s happened, the damage is already done. See any historical GOA report as proof.
Now through technology we have shared databases, digital photography, and other means to produce accurate measures, and subsequently, it doesn’t take any amount of time or money to increase accuracy of these measures or control the legitimacy of their inputs. Sure, credit card fraud didn’t bring down credit card companies, welfare fraud didn’t bring down welfare, medicare fraud didn’t bring down medicare and voter fraud has never brought down the country, but that’s not the point. The point here is that it makes perfect sense to do everything inexpensively possible to do things to prevent fraud which will reduce the OPPORTUNITY for fraud in those areas and we now have the means to cheaply and easily do so.
Even if the new measures proposed determine that the 1% fraud then is the same 1% now, it’s a more accurate 1% and we know that we’ve now closed much of the holes that could make it 2% and could cost the State even more millions or even billions of dollars in further overlap, fraud, and waste.
If you really want to go back 240 years, sure – the Dems had a valid position before regarding race or economic status. More kids were born out of hospitals, car loans, home loans, and other things were harder to come by – just a few of many valid reasons the Dems had at the time. Also, though, for about 140 of those years there wasn’t income tax, for about 160 of those years there wasn’t Social Security, and for almost 190 of those years there wasn’t Medicare so there was far less need to actually have “proper” ID in those classes but now? All those programs exist and furthermore, we already have dozens of technological applications from the last 10 yearswhich can verify the legitimacy of those program’s recipients or at the very least their residency.
Back to voter legitimacy. Let’s say 100,000 people are registered to vote and yet 101,000 actually do. Two questions: 1) How long and how many man hours would it take after the vote to chase down and follow up fake utility bills to figure out which of those votes were illegitimate? And more importantly, 2) how then would the Democrats suggest we prevent this from happening a second time?
Respectfully, I put that second question to you: what measure would you then say is the easiest, fairest, and fastest to implement in order to reduce/prevent/discourage voter fraud? (and Medicare fraud, SS fraud, and Welfare fraud simultaneously?) To me, the easiest answer to that is proper secure ID and the fact that we already have yearly, monthly, or even weekly financial transactions with government already demonstrates the need for it.
The bottom line here I think is two things:
1) The fact that Dems are so afraid of a legitimate vote is in itself scary. One could argue that an illegitimate vote could favor either side, but the Dems are playing the race card like its Mississippi Burning all over again, which in the day and age of $10 secure biometric ID’s can be nothing other than a clear and blatant move to try and influence and intimidate those illegitimate votes to the Democratic side.
2) A legitimate voter of any nationality, color, or economic condition should have zero problem with any of these identification measures, and there’s no good reason why anyone should not want to have more accuracy (aka “efficiency”) in government with any of these measures within any of its programs.
At least the argument of “is the hassle worth it?” like the one you’re presenting has some legitimacy to it in my opinion, similar to whether or not all these changes to Homeland Security have been “worth it” regarding thwarting or preventing terrorist attacks, but comments like Lee’s, however, immediately make it a distant second to the absolutely pathetic argument and charge of racism. It makes no sense to me why the “is it worth it?” argument wouldn’t be a better one to make, but then again nowhere except on the Democrat side are there more people who make their living playing the race card or worse, have it as their only card to play.
Like I said, every immigrant I’ve talked to has no problem getting or showing ID to vote, but we all have an issue – Democrat, Republican, or otherwise, with the race card play drowning out the far better questions (like yours) about this issue.
dedd79 ,
For a long time you didn’t have to show proof of age ID to buy alcohol or cigarettes . Where is the evidence of underage drinking and smoking before the ID laws ?
I believe voters are at least as honest as teenagers are .
Alan Scott | January 9, 2012 at 7:52 pm
Welcome!
Glad you found the new joint!
pino,
Thank you for the welcome. Lately I haven’t had so many .