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.
And he went to Austin, Texas, on Tuesday to give a speech denouncing what his ally Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) calls “a deliberate and systematic attempt to prevent millions of elderly voters, young voters, students, minority and low-income voters from exercising their constitutional right to engage in the democratic process.”
Hogwash. Yes, using neutral-seeming barriers to deny blacks a real chance to vote was central to Jim Crow — but for a generation now, the nation’s assigned an entire division of the Justice Department precisely to jumping on top of any such chicanery.
This is not a civil-rights issue, it’s ensuring that everyone’s vote counts.
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.
Even posturing about the issue might sway a few souls. Hence the new Senate bill, introduced yesterday by New York’s own Chuck Schumer and Ben Cardin of Maryland, to criminalize “deceptive” campaign literature, such as giving the wrong date for elections. A similar bill went nowhere four years ago, and this one’s likely just as doomed — but it’s a fine pretext for muddying the debate over voter-ID.
In fact, Holder is right on one count: This is a moral issue, if not in the way he claims.
The history of voting in America has been one of expanding the franchise to include (by constitutional amendment) blacks, women and young adults. But it’s not infinitely expandable to felons, foreigners and fraudsters — no matter how much use the Dems might see in those constituencies.
Were photo-ID regulations as onerous as liberals claim, “the young, the poor, the elderly and minorities” would barely be able to function. Further, it is an insult to millions of Americans to assume that they are too ignorant to know when elections are (hint: they’re generally on Tuesdays).
The Supreme Court, in its 6-3 Indiana decision, called voter-ID laws “eminently reasonable.” That’s the true “moral” position. But with a crucial election coming up next year, expect the Obama administration to go all in to try and stop them.