Friday, March 29, AD 2024 6:44am

Revelations from a Twitter Exchange

It has always been incomprehensible to me that we don’t require photo identification for voting. The idea that you can just go up to an election official, simply state your name, and then receive your ballot is mind boggling. We require identification for so many other important functions, yet we’re basically leaving it up to the honor system when it comes to voting. It’s simply a matter of fairness. It’s bad enough that my vote gets cancelled out by idiots – you know, people like Joe Biden – but it is even more unfair to have it cancelled out by someone who does not have a legal right to vote in that particular election. Requiring identification certainly wouldn’t eliminate all incidents of voter fraud, but they would go a long way in ensuring that everyone who votes has a legal right to do so.

Well, the major argument against these laws is that we are somehow disenfranchising people. This is utter nonsense. No one who has a legal right to vote would be barred from voting because of a photo i.d. law. Sure, there are people who do not possess photo identification, particularly the elderly. How they function without identification is a mystery to me, but most of the proposed laws have provisions to help these people get identification.

Yet that is not how some people on the left claim to see it. To them, evil Republicans just want to make sure the poor and the elderly are forced to stay home on election day. Today I had a twitter exchange that typified the attitude of many anti-i.d. folks. It hammered home a few things about their attitude that is frankly quite scary.

1. Opponents of voter i.d. laws celebrate helplessness. You almost have to applaud people who are so committed to their cause that they are willing to openly confess levels of idiocy and/or helplessness that would shame most. When my twitter interlocuter complained of the excessive effort it took to get photo i.d., I replied that it took me about three minutes to assemble all the documents I needed when I had to replace my driver license. Not so for this fellow. Evidently it took him months to get his birth certificate, social security, and other documents. What this told me is that this guy was walking around without a driver’s license, a social security card, and a birth certificate, because he was waiting to obtain these documents. How does someone in their 30s or 40s not possess any of these documents, and why did he wait until he needed a new driver’s licence to get replacements?

Look, we’re all a little disorganized at times, and I’m sure it would have taken me much longer to find my documents had my wife not organized our file drawers. Yet even messy, occasionally ditzy me would have known enough to keep those things around somewhere.

I don’t mean to make light of people who move around and are at a place in their life where it is difficult to keep track of stuff. But to essentially boast of helplessness, and to argue against identification laws on the supposition that everyone out there is as helpless as you is kind of sad. My mother is  75 years old, and I am pretty sure she knows where her birth certificate is.

2. To the degree that it is difficult to obtain photo identification, it is because of government bureaucracy. This is actually a point my twitter opponent made, so I’m just re-iterating it here. It’s just funny that the people most vociferous in their opposition to these laws come up with the laws and rules that make trips to the DMV less enjoyable that transferring at Hartsfield Airport.

3. Arguments about voter suppression reveal more about the Democrats’ agenda than it does about Republican motivation, namely that they are okay with voter fraud because they benefit from it. This is the big one. Democrats argue that Republicans want to enact these laws because it will help Republicans in general elections. As are most Democratic arguments, it is a variation on the “Republicans are mean, racist, bigoted, sexist, homophobes who want to starve granny out of her house” theme. Yet what does this argument implicitly say about Democrats? That they benefit from people voting illegally. Oh, they’ll say it’s because the type of voter “suppressed” by these laws are Democratic-leaning voters. For once they are speaking the truth. Illegal immigrants and felons do tend to vote for Democrats in unusually high proportion. When Democrats caterwaul about vote suppression, they actually mean it. They realize that every vote counts, so even a few extra hundred illegal votes could mean the difference between defeat and victory. Right, Senator Franken? They are petrified that only people eligible to vote will be able to do so.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
12 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Pauli
Friday, August 17, AD 2012 8:43pm

Well, yeah. The amazing thing is how much support the laws have, as Byron York pointed out on Wednesday.

Foxfier
Admin
Friday, August 17, AD 2012 8:45pm

Yeah.

Paul D.
Paul D.
Friday, August 17, AD 2012 9:36pm

So the very government that they want implementing Obamacare which is magnitudes greater in complexity, they believe is incompetent to issue photo id. What happen to their unshakable belief in the power of the state to make all things right and just?

Donna V.
Donna V.
Friday, August 17, AD 2012 9:48pm

It is now standard procedure to ask people to produce ID as well as an insurance card at hospitals and doctor’s offices (of course, they’ll make an exception if you show up at the ER bleeding, but it is required for all non-emergent procedures). The Catholic hospital I work at does a lot of charity care, but the ID requirement is enforced. So those poor and elderly people I pass in the hallways every day showed ID at the registration desk.

Similiarly, I was carded when I bought a bottle of wine the other day, although I don’t flatter myself that I look like I’m under 21. Liquor stores abound in the inner cities. Do they not card poor people?

Honestly, I don’t believe the issue is whether or not the poor have ID. Unless you are living completely off the grid, you MUST have ID in today’s world. Of course they have it.

No, what the Left is objecting to is having to PRODUCE ID at a polling place. Because it interferes with voter fraud and voter fraud favors Democrats. That is the only reason to oppose voter ID.

Voter ID at the polls still doesn’t solve the issue of the dearly departed voting. Our first Republican president is buried in Illinois. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn that Honest Abe has been a faithful Democrat voter at least Boss Daley’s time.

Foxfier
Admin
Saturday, August 18, AD 2012 12:20am

Similiarly, I was carded when I bought a bottle of wine the other day, although I don’t flatter myself that I look like I’m under 21. Liquor stores abound in the inner cities. Do they not card poor people?

A lot of places say they card anyone who looks under 40….and I’m only nearly 30… and still don’t get carded.
That said, I’ve got a three year old in the cart, a toddling baby on my hip, look like I haven’t slept in a few days and am buying a cheap box of wine or a bottle of Jaeger and/or Fireball. Not exactly “teen sneaking in to drink” material.

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Saturday, August 18, AD 2012 8:40am

“What this told me is that this guy was walking around with a driver’s licence, a social security card, and a birth certificate, because he was waiting to obtain these documents.”

I have a driver’s license which I always carry with me, and a Social Security card which is kept in a fireproof box at home. (It’s my understanding that you SHOULD NOT carry around your Social Security card routinely due to the risk of loss and subsequent identity theft.) I do not, however, currently have a birth certificate because I’ve never yet been asked to produce one for myself; but I know how to obtain one — contact the county clerk’s office in the county where I was born and request a certified copy. There is a fee for this service, might be as much as $10, but if someone were desperately poor and couldn’t afford the fee I’d think one of these organizations would help pay it for them.

James
James
Saturday, August 18, AD 2012 8:54am

It is apparent to me why the Democrats do not want a photo ID requirement for voting. If you want to initiate a seismic shift from the current representative republic form of US government towards a communist state, the last thing you want is a photo ID requirement for voting. You stack the deck with illegal voters whom you promise everything to (for now) and then when the tide turned, poof! Instant banana republic. Can you say “President Daniel Ortega”?

Pinky
Pinky
Saturday, August 18, AD 2012 10:01am

I didn’t have a copy of my birth certificate. It took me about a month to get one. I haven’t had a Social Security card in years. It’s a pain to get government forms, and I can sympathize with the idea that some people won’t register to vote because of the effort.

In theory, the anti voter ID people have a point. I’ve been involved in voter registration drives. They’d shock you. The default assumption that most of us live our lives with, that other people are sufficiently competent to take care of themselves, goes out the window. Should these people have the vote? Well, that’s a toughie. I don’t know how I’d answer that other than to say that I haven’t participated in a voter registration drive in a long time.

And if someone registers and doesn’t vote, there’s no harm in that, according to their argument. But that assumes that excess names on the lists won’t lead to voter fraud. The two things that the voter ID side has to demonstrate are that voter fraud is a real problem, and that they’re not racists. The beauty of the other side’s position is that, if you argue that voter fraud is a problem, that automatically makes you a racist. It’s a Catch-22.

Rozin
Rozin
Saturday, August 18, AD 2012 10:40am

The same logic goes for illegal immigration. If the Left thought that those folks were Rush Limbaugh dittoheads they would be planting mines at the border. The problem is getting more urgent because the Left is increasingly arrogant (and fearful) so they are going to try for more wholesale fraud in future elections. I think where they are headed is mandatory voting on the reasonable theory that the stay at homes are more Dem supporting than Repub. The increasing window to vote ahead of time is a major step in that direction. A bit more attention and energy from the Repubs to combat it would be welcome but I am not holding my breath. They are probably more scared of the Tea Party.

PM
PM
Saturday, August 18, AD 2012 11:17am

ID’s with pictures at the voting places would be good for what’s become of this nation in the area of virtue and logic.

Wondering how absentee ballots are monitored and whether they are proliferating.

Without showing a picture identification issued by state or federal gov. at the table with the lists and ballots, there are no guarantees of honesty.

Do the new batches of aliens get ID’s? How are they identified as ‘illegal’?

Then comes the question of by whom and how the ID’s would be produced. Could the money granted to community organizers be better spent on this as project?

Discover more from The American Catholic

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Scroll to Top