Can someone explain why this is *gasp* RACIST

Okay, Texas has a law that wants every voter to show a picture ID.
Can someone explain how that is racist when - with very very VERY rare exceptions - everyone has a driver's license with a picture on it?






I know I saw a thread on this somewhere before and we discussed it before but the search engine didn't find it so I could reactivate it.

Because it's a 'poll tax'.

The reason Republicans push to make it harder to vote, and no it's not just the ID thing because they have a whole raft of voter suppression efforts, is because they want to exclude poor people. The fewer low income people who vote the better off it is for Republican candidates so they have an extremely long history of trying to prevent certain groups from voting.

They don't want college students voting because young people tend not to vote for them thus Republican try to make it so even college students who have lived in an area for four years can't vote in that area. Urban people tend not to drive or even own cars (they take mass transit) simply because of the expense (parking in cities can cost $1000 a month) so if you don't have a car why would you carry a driver's license?

You can get an ID even if you're not a driver but then you have to have a birth certificate (sometimes other documents like marriage certificate or divorce certificates if a woman changed her last name) along with a current utility bill. If you don't have those documents then you have to pay a fee to get copies and those fees can be as high as $50 each. That means a married woman who doesn't have her original birth certificate or her marriage certificate might have to pay $100 just to get the documents to get her ID so she can vote. That's an unconstitutional poll tax. BTW Republicans absolutely refused to give away the required ID for free too but even our right wing Supreme Court told them they had to do so.

Because apparently minorities aren't smart enough to get valid state id's, but they are smart enough to vote.

It's racist because it keeps illegal aliens and dead people from voting for Democrats.

Guess it's vacation or lack of sleep or something but I fail to see how it can be a poll tax or anything else if you already have a driver's license and are told to use it for photo ID
I mean, no one I know of complains when Walmarts wants to see your photo ID before you walk out with the stuff you've bought on a credit card.
What's the difference?

I'd argue you're an idiot if you don't have those documents accessible in a safe for these situations. You move out of your parents place, you take your birth certificate and put it in a safe or a safe location. You get married, you don't lose that fucking certificate. You divorce, same thing. You die... well, at that point, it's your survivors' problem.

It takes a buy-in. You must first associate racial minorities with poverty, then assert that the ID requirement amounts to a poll tax, then voila', racist policy meant to disenfranchise minority voters.

And the rationalizations are endless. Offer IDs for free, then you're imposing the logistical cost of driving somewhere to get it. Bus them there at no charge, and they're still missing time at work.

Basically, any attempt to verify identity or citizenship for voting is racist. The Gods of Political Correctness have spoken.

There are other tricks Republicans do as well. They'll make sure there are fewer voting locations with fewer voting machines in Democratic leaning districts while the Republican districts normally end up with with a voting location every few blocks and each of those locations will have more machines than they need. The goal is to make it as hard as possible to vote in Democratic areas due to long lines are having to travel far just to get to one while in Republican areas it's easy to vote and there are no lines.

In addition Republicans like to purge voter rolls in ways even they know are false. Someone named John Doe will get convicted of a felony in one state so Republicans will go throw the voter registration data bases, identify 30 additional people named John Doe, with half living in Republican areas and half living in Democratic leaning areas. They'll challenge the 15 in the Democratic leaning area but do nothing to the other 15 in the Republican area so those 15 people arrive at the polls but are turned away saying they're not registered even though they've ALWAYS voted at that location. BTW one check on social security numbers would prove none of those 30 people are in fact the guy in jail but Republicans know that already and are just looking for excuses to suppress the vote.

Then there are the numerous other little changes all of which are designed to reduce the ability of people to actually vote. They cut the hours in which voting stations are open so that way people who work late can't vote, they'll make it much harder to get an absentee ballot because once again they want to reduce the number of people who vote (and they'll do it selectively only in poor or minority areas), they end "motor voter laws" which make it so everyone with a license is automatically registered to vote, they end same day registration and even put stupid deadlines (in some states you must register to vote half a year prior to the election so even if you register 5 months and 29 days before the election you can't vote).

It is a pervasive pattern with Republicans to try to supress voters they don't like using a bunch of dirty tricks (like mailing people fliers with the wrong voting date or wrong voting location or robo calling people with lies about who endorsed who). That's why when Republicans come up with their four billionth effort to once again restrict voting rights few people believe their claims that they're not motivated by voter suppression.

No not at all. In fact I intentionally avoided that tie in. The fact remains Republicans know rich people tend to vote for them and poor people don't so they deliberately target ways to prevent low income people from voting. They do it in dozens of ways, several former Republican operatives have even wrote books about it, and it's all designed with one goal in mind (making Republicans win and making it harder for anyone else to win). It's dishonest and it is bad for our democracy.

I find it very amusing how Oerdin shows, with every post he makes that has any bearing on politics, just how deeply he has drunk the Kool-aid.

"Teh Republicans is teh evil. Teh Democrats gonna save dis country!"

I totally fail to see how anyone can think either party is significantly more honest, or really has the country's best interest more at heart, than the other party. Both of them are corrupt, self-serving, and rotten to the core, interested primarily in getting and keeping power.

I'd say personal responsibility is good for democracy, and if you can't be assed to get identification even when it is freely provided you have no one to blame but yourself.

I have to show ID to get a library card, but it's too much of a burden on me to do so to exercise my rights?

The concept of proving who you are is absolutely vital to democracy. One man, one vote - period.

When I was 18 and voting for the first time I was not asked for an ID. My parents came with me, they introduced me as their son, and the guy in the voting both was one of my former high school teachers so he already knew me and knew I lived in the area. That was that.

I agree but if you want to follow the constitution then the process to get an ID which is required to vote then it must be free. Any sort of charge what so ever as a requirement to vote is an illegal and unconstitutional poll tax so either make the process completely free or drop the requirement.

Notice how Republicans keep trying to fight the idea of making the process to get such an ID being free? They can't claim to love the constitution but constantly break it when ever they feel like it yet Republicans constantly come up with blatantly unconstitutional things.

That's retarded. I point out one problem which absolutely pervades one of the parties and makes it conclusively worse (at least on that issue) and rather then give a fact based rebuttle you babble idiotic nonsense about "drinking da kool-aid". Rebut the facts or shove off.

Anonymous voting is equally vital. It's a tough balance to strike.

The concept of something being free but not cheap is definitely worth pondering in the context of this discussion.

Can you come up with even a single case of that happening in the last 20-30 years? Even the Bush administration and the Bush Justice Department was forced to admit there just aren't that many examples of vote fraud out there so we have a solution to a problem that essentially doesn't exist. I mean if Rove spent several hundred million trying to find vote fraud but couldn't then there just might not be that much out there to find.

I'm not seeing how that is relevant at all.

They already check voter registration - they just can't confirm if the person showing up is that voter.

Once that's done, all votes are anonymous anyway.

How exactly do you prove voter fraud without showing IDs? I could go out and get an entire distract of crack whores registered, then have my volunteers come in and use their registration to vote.

Road blocks and incorrect purging of voter lists is a crime and should never happen. But that doesn't mean that we can't ask for a sanity check on the system by simply making people prove who they say they are.

The two just struck down in Texas and Wisconsin were free.

It's the Dems who don't want free voter ID to be the law, because they know large elements of their base won't bother to get the ID.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/voter-id-laws-struck-down-in-texas-wisconsin/

BTW it used to be students could show school I.D.s if they had pictures, or factory workers could show their employer issued ID card, heck, in most big cities transit cards have your name and picture on them. Given that you can't even demostrate voter fraud is a problem (and every justice department for the last 5 Presidents have said it isn't) then why make it even harder to vote unless your goal is voter suppression?

You're proposing a cure but can't even show there is a problem which needs curing.

True enough. Although even with pictures it's hard to tell them apart anyway.

I can agree with that. Yes, Dems are being partisan by not wanting to make it harder to vote and Republicans are being partisan by trying to make it ever harder to votes. My point is we should be making it as easy as possible to vote as long as we can keep the voting fraud free.

A school ID should be good enough, utility bills with ANY sort of photo ID should be good enough, heck, even if you want to make it a driver's license that's fine as long as EVERY PART of the process is free other wise you're breaking the constitution.

On one hand you have voter rights and on the other you have establishing voter eligibility. It's tough balancing the two.

I'll give you that there are fewer voting machines in democratic districts, but that just levels the field. Since democrats don't believe in work they have more hours to vote. Hence, fewer machines are needed.

We have to show a picture ID AND one other piece of ID to vote. And these are people (running the local voting sections) who know what we are doing before we even do it.

What's the problem?

Making them bring some sort of picture ID (provided it is absolutely free) is fine but it has to be free to get including any and all required documents. Having a current utility bill and a student ID should be good enough, having a utility bill and a transit card (with photo on it) should be good enough, having other known people vouch for you (like a parent or something) with a current utility bill should be good enough. Heck, it's entirely possible to do a finger print scan these days just like they do at the bank when you cash a check and that should be good enough.

This changes voter anonymity as to who they cast their votes for not one iota.

And they don't have anonymity whether or not they voted already due to voter registration.

Hence, there may be valid concerns about this, but voter anonymity isn't one of them. This has nothing to do with recording who they vote for.