Posted on 10/25/2005 9:57:27 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
(It helps fight fraud, Green says)
MILWAUKEE, WI - Requiring voters to show a photo identification card would disenfranchise minorities, the elderly and the poor, U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, told a congressional committee Monday.
But Rep. Mark Green, R-Green Bay, told the Committee on House Administration that a voter ID requirement is a simple way to restore people's trust in the integrity of elections.
The committee held the hearing in Milwaukee at Green's request to discuss problems from last year's presidential election in Wisconsin.
"Requiring voters to show a government-approved photo ID is the only way for us to protect the fundamental American principle of one man, one vote. Every American has the sacred right to cast their vote, but only once," Green said.
But Moore said a voter ID bill would place a disproportionate burden on minorities, the elderly and the poor.
"There are poor people with no stability who move three times a year, so the address on their ID isn't current. You've got people who can't afford a car, so they don't have a driver's license," Moore said. "The more requirements you put on these people, the more you will disenfranchise them."
The committee invited Moore to sit with the panel for the hearing, although she is not a member of the committee.
The hearing was arranged under the auspices of investigating voter fraud allegations from the 2004 presidential elections, but the topic returned repeatedly to the issue of a voter ID bill.
Sharon Robinson, the director of Milwaukee's Department of Administration, said many instances of voter irregularity in 2004 were more a result of administrative oversight than outright fraud. For example, some 4,600 more ballots were cast than voters tallied at the polls, but Robinson said poll workers sometimes forgot to tear up the pink voter numbers that kept count of voters for each ballot distributed. The result, she said, was that the same voter number might have been used more than once.
Moore asked Robinson whether a voter ID bill could prevent such administrative snafus in the future.
"Photo IDs would not have fixed the problem," Robinson said. She said the greater priority should be to provide effective and uniform training to poll workers.
Committee member Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich., said he was surprised the voter ID bill was even an issue and he didn't understand claims that getting an ID is too difficult. He suggested such claims must be politically motivated.
"The point of a voter law is to ensure the integrity of the election," Ehlers said. "When you have a state that was decided by 11,000 votes, it doesn't take much fraud" to falsify the outcome.
The committee also heard from community activists such as Jeff Erlanger, who uses a wheelchair. In response to comments by committee chairman Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, that the 2002 Help America Vote Act provided photo ID exemptions for the disabled, Erlanger suggested that such exemptions could create opportunities for fraud.
"Not everyone who's disabled is honest." A photo ID exemption "doesn't stop someone from getting in a wheelchair, rolling in and voting multiple times," he said.
A judge in Georgia recently struck down a similar voter ID bill in that state. In an Oct. 18 ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Harold Murphy said Georgia's voter ID law indirectly imposes an unconstitutional poll tax because of the cost of obtaining an ID, and the law was more broad than necessary to prevent voter fraud.
Wisconsin 'Rats scramble to save their stake in Voter Fraud.
Just bring in the stub off an old welfare check.
I somebody has voted five times in each previous election, and then is limited by new rules to voting only once, hasn't he been disenfranchised?
I'll be happy to spend $5 tax dollars per voter to make sure positive, bar-coded identification is provided to each voter.
Then there is no way out.
There's nothing the government can require, that wouldn't constitute a "poll tax", is there?
yes it would disinfranchise those poor dead people who would like to vote, over and over again.
They could call this the Mayor Dailey voter protection act.
Time for the purple inkpots we see in the middle east.
Failed to mention two things:
First, the law in GA allowed the poor to get the license for free, and even provided assistance such as mobile neighborhood service.
Second it failed to note that the poor and minorities in AL already have to show voter IDs. I guess the poor and minority in AL are made of tougher stuff than in GA. (Of course AL votes Red State, perhaps because the voter fraud in nipped in the bud.)
Doggone it!!! The dead and imaginary people have the right to vote too!
I hope Congressman Green continues pushing for this Voter ID Bill. It will ferret out all the 'rats that will oppose it, essentially coming out and saying, "Hey! I think voter fraud is ok!"
disenfranchises \disenfranchises\ adj.
deprived of the rights of committing fraud, especially the right to vote illegally. Opposite of enfranchises.
Syn: disfranchised, voteless, democrat.
[WordNet 1.5]
Any idea why this happened?
It's also unfair to force Milwaukee's dead and incarcerated voters, who have previously been able to vote "anonymously". Not to mention the three- and five-precinct voters who will now have to be ID'd at each polling place.
Not quite. One of the ideas for a solution being tossed around here in Georgia is to issue the voter ID at the DMV, free of charge. The driver's liscense could be used in lieu of the voter ID card at the polling place.
That way, there is no "poll tax" on either the rich or the poor, and the voter ID cards will be readily available.
What a steaming pile... The pink voter number slips are on a pad like note paper. Voters are given this pink slip along with their ballot. When the voter puts his ballot into the machine, the pink slip is kept by a poll worker.
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