What most people don’t seem to realize is just how many IDs aren’t accepted under these laws – like student IDs, for instance. No photo ID that doesn’t have an expiration date is accepted.
The rest of the people who insist it’s not big deal? Many of them are racists, and some of them are just contrarians who have their heads stuck up their ass:
HOUSTON — Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday he opposes a new photo ID requirement in Texas elections because it would be harmful to minority voters.
In remarks to the NAACP in Houston, the attorney general said the Justice Department “will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious right.”
Under the law passed in Texas, Holder said that “many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them – and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them.”
“We call those poll taxes,” Holder added spontaneously, drawing applause as he moved away from the original text of his speech with a reference to a fee used in some Southern states after slavery’s abolition to disenfranchise black people.
The 24th amendment to the constitution made that type of tax illegal.
Holder spoke a day after a trial started in federal court in Washington over the 2011 law passed by Texas’ GOP-dominated Legislature that requires voters to show photo identification when they get to the polls.
Under Texas’ law, Holder noted, a concealed handgun license would serve as acceptable ID to vote, but a student ID would not. He went on to say that while only 8 percent of white people do not have government-issued photo IDs, about 25 percent of black people lack such identification.
H/t to attorney Maria Aspiazu for the link.
I think one fruitful point of attack on these ID card rules is the clear discrimination against women, many of whom have to come up with extra documents (marriage licenses and divorce decrees) to track their name changes. I only need one birth certificate.
Especially the elderly who are suddenly required to supply documents that are 60 or 70 years old. And then travel 20 miles and sit for an hour in a state motor vehicle license center to have their pictures taken.
Of course, agents of international terrorist organizations will be able to pay professional forgers to fabricate all this. I guarantee that there is a little man in a shop in Switzerland who can do anything a state employee in Ohio can do.)
Of course, respectable people who have led prosperous, orderly lives will have much less trouble complying.
And as to that 8% of white people lacking an ID its only really an issue if they vote in Democratic leaning precincts.