Although I deplore and disagree with legislation aimed at discouraging abortions and adversely affecting the rights of women, I recognize that such legislation is motivated by the good faith belief that abortions are morally wrong. Not so for the legislation aimed at disenfranchising voters for the faux purpose of preventing voter fraud. Such voter identification legislation is offered by Republicans as a crass and blatant attempt to eliminate votes likely to go to Democrats. Just as the Republicans have created a fake Barack Obama to run against, they have created this myth of voter fraud for the purpose of stifling the voting rights of a portion of the electorate.
The consequence of this abuse of the legislative process is to disenfranchise millions of persons, many of whom are elderly, students, persons with disabilities, the poor, and most certainly people of color. Evidence that the legislation is meant to discourage voting is the fact that many states specifically limit the means of identification required rather than broaden it. In some states a valid U.S. Passport or U.S. Military ID will not suffice. The Brennan Center for Justice predicts that 10% of voters do not have and will not get the required driver's license or state photo ID in order to qualify to vote. Even those who attempt to satisfy the requirement will face expenditures of time and money -- obstacles all calculated to discourage the effort.
The fraud that actually exists is not in voter identification but rather in the alleged justification for this legislation. There is no epidemic of voters misrepresenting their identity at the polls. Every study that has been done of ineligible voters voting or attempting to vote has revealed infinitesimal instances. If there were really a danger, why wouldn't this (if nothing else) be the subject of bipartisan support? If unauthorized persons were voting in large numbers, why wouldn't the Democrats be as vehement in stopping it as Republicans. Is it only being committed by Democratic voters?
No, the reality is that it does not exist. The legislation is a mean-spirited attempt to discourage certain potentially Democratic voting blocks -- not ensure their validity. What is happening here is symptomatic of the current political arena -- win at any cost and by any means. Oppose and filibuster all meaningful legislation; threaten to shut down the government; demean the president and now keep people from voting. This type of legislation according to the Brennan Center will disenfranchise 25% of African-Americans, 16% of Hispanics and 18% of elderly voters. As the Republicans seek to roll back women's rights, so it seems they yearn for the days of the Jim Crow poll tax.
By the time those documents have been acquired, the total money spent exceeds the amounts that were required for the poll tax of the Jim Crowe era.
There is no substantive difference in motive or result.
It seems to me that real voting scams can't bother with individuals, and always need plausible deniability, so are organized by loading the dice in these ways. While registration & identification are legitimate requirements, making them difficult isn't.
Eg I think FL striking registered voters from the rolls in 2000 without notice on the allegation that they were felons is a violation of due process, in that the right to vote is vested & should require notice to strike a voter.
IMHO, the more significant problem is sorting out who's who & what's what among all the propositions & local seats.
So come on Republicans no one wants the Jobs your creating with laws about brith control and abortions monitor.
They need real jobs ! The USA needs the Bridges and Highways, Sewer Plants, Water protection, and so many others things so release the Presidents jobs bill you have hostage and let recover already.
ACORN was cleared of the voter fraud charges brought against them in James O'Keefe's creatively edited "documentary", but those in Congress who should know better voted to defund them. Republicans seem very proud of destroying an organization that helped involve citizens in the voting process. Voter suppression is a much bigger and real problem.
ACORN also prodived meals for the shutins, med checks and transport for them to doctors appointments even shopping for food.
It goes along with: If the facts do not support you, make some up.
Given that the Republican Party's predominantly white, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic base is demographically doomed to minority status in the near future, it was predictable that they would try to artificially extend their political power through such Machiavellian means as vote-counting fraud, gerrymandering, deregulation of political spending, deregulation of media with respect to fairness and concentration, and, as Judge Sarokin has so ably argued here, disenfranchisement. One thing not mentioned is that 1 in 8 African-American men are *already* disenfranchised, often permanently, because of felony convictions. In a country where the cell block has replaced the auction block, it's fair to wonder if race-based disenfranchisement wasn't the primary motive behind many state bans on voting by felons and former felons in the first place.
As I've said before, I wish Judge Sarokin were still on the bench. I sense that the current Supreme Court majority is likely to take the fraud rationale for Voter ID laws at face value, and we can use all the reality-minded judges we can get at the district and circuit level to properly frame the issues for them ... or at least run interference.
If '10%' 'won't (note that word) get a drivers license or state ID, why not? What is stopping them? If they have a cell phone, they've gone through a more rigorous process than getting an ID.
Aren't double standards fun?
Identification is going to be an increasingly important social issue. I've run into a number of Americans who can't identify themselves, for different reasons - the usual problem is failure to connect the birth certificate to a recent photo ID.
Of course neither a driver's license nor military ID proves citizenship (as a passport does) but it seems that it's time for more uniform standards. As a practical matter, "full faith & credit" needs to be extended to the grassroots details of daily life, or daily life will get all gummed up.
In fact, sticking your nose in books, without coming up to check your bearings against what you read (or noticing what is going on around you), often aggravates that problem.
I've always suspected that learning was not so much an end it itself, as a way to live better. I think that can be supported by the observation that any sort of trash can be learned without making it accurate or useful.
Would you make your knowledge of women's motives a pre-requisite to their prerogative to end a pregnancy? Are you somehow trying to connect Voltaire's idea of murder with abortion? Or what?
Also the late term real abortion partial birth is seldom used very very seldom ! It is niche issue. The only time that procedure is done is when the fetus is so malformed it will not live outside the womb and is the result usually of incest and no prenatal care. But also if the fetus was born the very sight of it's being so malformed it would do untold mental damage to the parents.
Before the WIC program the partial birth abortions happened 1 on 3.2 Million Prtegancys. After the WIC program gave women prenatal care the need for partial birth abortion dropped to 1 in 4.1 Million pregancys. Republicans fought the WIC program tooth and nail.