Wednesday, July 12, 2006

ID for Vote

Georgia’s law that only registered voters with State ID can participate in the vote is getting some significant roadblocks this week.

      The state's top elections official testified Wednesday that about 675,000 registered voters have neither a Georgia driver license nor state identification, as a federal court considers a request to block a Georgia law that requires voters to show photo ID.

      U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy was hearing the civil rights groups' motion less than a week before the new law would apply for the first time at the polls.

Earlier a County Superior Court judge issued a restraining order on the law until the issue is resolved.  Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, a little time for citizens of the state to pick up a state ID of some sort before the law fully goes into effect would be a good thing.

Apparently there is a case now before the state Supreme Court and this one before a Federal judge on the same bill.  Quite a barrage of lawsuits against this attempt to curtail voter fraud.

You can probably guess many of the organizations pushing these cases; ACLU, NAACP and Hispanic groups.  They would like you to think that this law is going to disenfranchise some group of people or another, but this is another case of phantom victimhood.  Basically you are a victim if you don’t get a readily available ID card that proves you are a citizen.  I realize this is harder for some people than others, but how hard is that really?  I would rather leave a small few voters who don’t want to bother with the small amount of time they would have to spend to acquire proof that they can indeed vote out in the cold than deal with the potential voter fraud.  Call it my “Sacrificing the incompetent for the sake of preventing access to the malicious” attitude.

By the way, don’t most states require you to carry some sort of ID on your person at all times?  In an age of heightened security and danger from terrorism, why aren’t we required to have that ID anyway?

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