Posted on 04/30/2008 2:46:26 AM PDT by MitchellC
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court -- in a shock 6-3 decision (shocking because Justice John Paul Stevens was on the side of the angels!) -- held that states could indeed require voters to show photo-ID before voting... causing Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY, 90%) to eructate, "This decision is a body blow to what America stands for -- equal access to the polls" (for senior citizens, minorities, and the poor... most of whom, apparently, carry no identification).
It's not just Chuck Schumer who is incensed by this ruling, and more generally, by the voter-ID laws that sparked it; almost the entire Democratic party seems up in arms about the very idea of requiring government-issued photo-ID before voters are allowed to vote.The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter-identification law on Monday, declaring that a requirement to produce photo identification is not unconstitutional and that the state has a “valid interest” in improving election procedures as well as deterring fraud.
In a 6-to-3 ruling in one of the most awaited election-law cases in years, the court rejected arguments that Indiana’s law imposes unjustified burdens on people who are old, poor or members of minority groups and less likely to have driver’s licenses or other acceptable forms of identification. Because Indiana’s law is considered the strictest in the country, similar laws in the other 20 or so states that have photo-identification rules would appear to have a good chance of surviving scrutiny.
The ruling, coming just eight days before the Indiana primary and at the height of a presidential election campaign, upheld rulings by a Federal District Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which had thrown out challenges to the 2005 law.
1. While I agree that the "poor or members of minority groups" are less likely to have government ID, that is entirely by their own choice (or more likely, their own apathy).Mere lack of money can't stop a voter from getting identification; although the Times doesn't consider it the kind of news "that's fit to print," the related AP story is more forthcoming on this point:
So money is no object; government ID is literally "priceless."Indiana provides IDs free of charge to people without driver's licenses. It also allows voters who lack photo ID's to cast a provisional ballot and then show up within 10 days at their county courthouse to produce identification or otherwise attest to their identity.
2. Where is the evidence that registered voters who are senior citizens are less likely to have photo-ID from the government than younger voters?In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find that they're more likely, not less, to have identification. I suspect this unsourced claim is intended to broaden the pool of putative "victims" of voter-ID laws... and especially to broaden it to include as many Republicans as possible.
3. Such bills will, when fully implemented -- for example, when extended to the rest of the United States and to include absentee balloting -- make it much, much harder to commit voter fraud... and today's Democratics depend so heavily on fraud, they probably can't survive without it.
Critics of the law make much of the fact that there have been so few prosecutions for voter fraud in Indiana. But that's Indiana, where Republican election officials pretty control the elections. I doubt that voter fraud has ever been a serious problem in that state.
But how about Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, New York City, Compton, East L.A., New Orleans, Miami, and other cities and even entire states where Democrats control the "standards" required to vote? That is where you're going to find massive voter fraud that turns the Democratic majority into a supermajority -- and the Republican minority into political impotence.
Take Loretta Sanchez: She first won California's 46th district in 1996, beating "B-1" Bob Dornan by 984 votes. California officials threw out 124; and when Congress investigated, they found 624 more votes that were definitely fraudulent... which reduced Sanchez's lead down to 236 votes (out of about 100,000 votes cast). At that point, not being able to prove that the voter fraud Congress found was enough to flip the election, the House for political reasons voted to end the investigation.
But look here... according to a column by Wall Street Journal writer John Fund, the INS subsequently found that as many as 4,023 ballots were cast in the 46th district by "illegal voters." But since there was no way to know for sure whether these four thousand Hispanic non-citizens and unregistered Hispanic voters voted for Loretta Sanchez or Bob Dornan, that could not be used in the investigation of her "victory."
(Much of this work was done after the House voted to terminate the investigation, and the full House finally shut down the committee and INS investigation before it could find even more voter fraud, thus embarassing Newt Gingrich even further.)
But there is more in that same John Fund column:
In 2002, Dean Gardner, a losing GOP candidate for California's state legislature, sent out a survey to 14,000 first-time voters. A total of 1,691 surveys came back. The results were startling: 76 people admitted that they weren't citizens but had voted, while 49 claimed not to have registered at their correct residence, as the law requires. Gardner lost by only 266 votes.
In the 2000 election, as the Missouri secretary of state later discovered, 56,000 St. Louis-area voters held multiple voter registrations. No one knows how much actual fraud took place, but it may have played a role in the Democratic defeats of incumbent Republican senator John Ashcroft, who lost his seat by 49,000 votes, and gubernatorial candidate Jim Talent, who lost by 21,000 votes....
A Post analysis [of the 2000 presidential election vote in Florida] discovered that 5,600 people voted whose names matched those of convicted felons. "These illegal voters almost certainly influenced the down-to-the-wire presidential election," the Post reported. "Of the likely felons identified by the Post, 68 percent were registered Democrats."
Note that this only counts actual, bona-fide election fraud; Democrats also have an array of legal or quasi-legal ways to prevent enemy votes from being counted, ranging from closing polls in Republican-leaning districts earlier than those in Democrat-leaning districts, to hypercritical challenging of Republican votes by elections boards, to selective recounts, all the way to actually filing lawsuits attempting to suppress the Republican vote (as in the Florida cases filed in Martin and Seminole counties in 2000, seeking to disenfranchise 25,000 absentee voters). None of these would be affected by voter-ID laws.
I believe that voter fraud increased substantially after President Bill Clinton signed the motor-voter bill in 1993 -- which I vigorously opposed from the very beginning: If a person has so little interest in the franchise that he won't bestir himself to register unless he's practically forced, then I don't want him voting at all. Fund evidently agrees:
In California, it is actually against state law for polling places to demand any form of ID that indicates citizenship. Not even Democrats try to defend that on its own grounds; it was simply pushed through the legislature in a power play. There can be no other purpose for such a bill than to make committing voter fraud as easy as taking a pie in the face.Why is such activity proliferating? It flows from the success of Democratic lawmakers in pushing aside clear, orderly, and rigorous voting procedures in favor of elastic and "inclusive" election rules that invite manipulation. A machine for corruption is the 1993 "Motor Voter Act," the first bill that President Clinton signed. The law requires government officials to allow anyone who renews a driver's license or applies for welfare or unemployment to register to vote on the spot, without showing ID or proof of citizenship. It also allows ID-free registration by mail. The law also makes it hard to purge voting lists of those who've died or moved. All this makes vote fraud a cinch, almost as easy as when Tammany Hall handed out pre-marked ballots.
I will never understand how asking someone for ID is such a problem. All it does its put a kink in Dems ability to cheat. I thought if you couldn’t prove who you were you didn’t have any business voting. Silly me.
I also see a new underground business in fake voter ID cards popping up around the country.
Build a better Rat trap and they build better Rats.
My own bank- where I've done business since circa 1964-- wants a thumbprint and photo ID when I cash someone else's check... even though everyone there knows me by sight. They just want documented confirmation of "who I am."
Likewise, you can't buy a beer at the store down the street without "proving" you are old enough to have a drink.
It's plain as the nose on your face that the only people opposed to this are favoring vote fraud.
What utter nonsense coming out of the mouth of a smooth talking rich lawyer! Photo ID has been around at low or no cost for twenty years. It is inexpensive, accessible, and effective. What a hollow argument!
All of our vulnerable citizens, both children and adults, are encouraged to carry identification for medical emergencies, and other good reasons.
These leftists very selectively "connect the dots" to anything they want. I strongly suspect that the leftists will lose many fraudulent voters if voter ID is required.
This won’t really effect the Dems because it doesn’t require ID. The ruling just says it’s OK to do so if a state decides to. Certainly, no Dem controlled legislature will ever submit a voter ID law.
Probably true, but many states, most notably California, have voter initiative processes, where a proposed law can be formulated, signed for and submitted to the voting population without any contribution from the elected community. If Californians can pass Props 174 and 189, they can likely pass this one, against which many have carped for many years (I used to live in that state).
Photo ID is a start. Proof of citizenship would be better.
And everything in English would be the best.
An article about vote fraud and no mention of Philadelphia?
Long time in coming.In Georgia,rat bastards complained that the pooooor could not afford the I.D.The state said no problem we will pay for your ID.They could not say anything after that.Fabulous.
A lot of the resistance to the ‘voter ID’ laws comes from people still fighting the decades old civil rights battle.
In the past, there where lots of schemes used to keep certain parties from voting.
For any legislation that can be seen to be ‘restricting voting’ for illegal or racist purposes, we need to bend over backwards to show that it does not.
Yup. Time for a grass roots and GOP effort to get such a ballot initiative moving. It will cost the Dems hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes. Hey, CA might even turn GOP again! DEFINITELY worth the effort!
All the while the RATS are moaning about voters having to produce photo ID to prove who they are in order to vote, they’re having no trouble about saying they’re going to make certain voters sign affidavits about how they vote. The usual breathtaking hypocrisy from them.
Ping.
Well this would certainly hurt in Chicago, were it implemented. I have seen first hand, how the Dem Machine operatives show up in vans, pick up the bums and winos-— err I mean “homeless”, and take them off to vote. If they had to show an ID, they would be prevented.
I guess this is just a mean spirited law designed to disenfranchise the homeless (/sarcasm)
In past times vote fraud has been assumed!
For Gary (and Lake County in general) vote fraud on a widespread basis has been demonstrated time and again ~ back in the middle of the last century 25,000 dead Puerto Ricans (who lived last in Puerto Rico, not Lake County) voted! Senators Hartke, Bayh (baby daddy to the current Bayh), Capehart, and others ALL benefited from voting irregularities. Otherwise they'd had to spend their lives as small town grifters and ward healers.
I know people who participated in resetting voting machines (the old lever type) AFTER the polls closed and before the guy came around to check and seal the machines for the official counting.
It's fun, too! Well, no use crying over spilled milk ~ those machines are in the trash now.
Indiana has had a vigorous and productive vote fraud tradition. It is now, presumably, coming to a close! (Bwahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!)
Who in this day and age doesn’t have some form of photo ID other than the cemetery voters, phantom voters and illegals who show up every election day to cast their votes for Democrats.
But how about Chicago ... and other cities and even entire states where Democrats control the "standards" required to vote? That is where you're going to find massive voter fraud that turns the Democratic majority into a supermajority
Ahhhh Chicago, my old home town. Where 'Vote Early and Often' is still the way of life.
After the 2000 election a Chicago FReeper got out his calculator and did some math. He found that in the Englewood neighborhood there were more votes cast (for Gore natch) than ADULT residents over 18. He added up the Precincts in Englewood compared to the US Census, the results were like 110%.
And as to Englewood, it is your classic ghetto - empty lots and burned out hulks. No gentrification here for sure. To boot its one of those neighborhoods where most adult males are felons (per Jesse Jackson) which makes the 110% vote turnout even more blatant.
So this decision would effect vote fraud IF we had a Voter ID law in IL, but we don't. For now Daley and his machine can still sleep easy. Well, as easy as one can with Patrick Fitzgerald breathing down your neck for corruption.
To types of ID are going to bring the Dhimmirats down.
The first is voter ID - without fraud, Dhims wouldn’t win anything but concentrated local elections.
The second ID is IDentity politics. They’ve got their constituency so trained to think as victim groups that the Clinton/Obama fight is going to split them irretrievably.
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