Free Republic

MADISON, Wis. - The voter ID melodrama in Wisconsin has opened right on cue. And the overblown "tragedy" takes place, as it always does, stage left. Despite historically high voter turnout in Tuesday's presidential primary election, liberals inside and outside Wisconsin are crying foul over the full-scale implementation of the state's photo ID law. The Huffington Post published a breathless piece headlined, "Dear Scott Walker: Wisconsin's Photo ID Law Did not Work 'Just Fine.' " Wisconsin's Republican governor on Wednesday tweeted: "Huge turnout yesterday shows that photo Id works just fine. Easy to vote hard to cheat." HuffPost drove its...

Graphic by Rick Dunham/Houston Chronicle Federal judges may be messing with Voter ID laws in Texas and Pennsylvania, but a new poll finds that the laws have strong support among voters. Seven in ten registered voters give photo ID requirements at the polls a thumbs up, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll conducted between Sept. 8 and 12. Only 28 percent oppose the concept and just 2 percent are unsure. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down voter ID requirement if a lower Commonwealth Court judge finds it’s difficult for all voters to obtain the proper...

........TexasAttorneyGeneralGregAbbott argues that the state has a responsibility to guard against election fraud, and that its new law is not subject to Justice Department review under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That provision, which has angered Southern conservatives for decades, requires jurisdictions with a historical pattern of discrimination to win federal "pre-clearance" from the JusticeDepartment or a federal court in Washington,D.C., before implementing changes in voting laws or political lines. Southern states, led by Alabama, have argued that Section 5 is a violation of states' rights. Texas Republicans have charged that President BarackObama's Justice Department has manipulated...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whom some pundits had written off as the GOP's nominee, may find a second coming in Iowa, if new poll data holds up. As Mitt Romney's campaign has suffered a startling decline in recent weeks, only to see Newt Gingrich eclipse the former Massachusetts governor's front-runner status, the battle for the Iowa caucuses set for Jan. 3 has become a wide-open race. New survey data prepared for the Perry campaign and shared by a source close within the campaign shows that the Texas governor may be poised to do much better in next month’s Iowa caucuses...

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) may have admitted that "Jim Crow was the wrong analogy to use" for photo voter ID laws, but that didn’t stop Bill Clinton from making similar comments just one month later. Clinton made the outrageous statement that “There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today.” Clinton continued to incite young listeners at a Washington conference this July by deriding what he called the “disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors...

<p>Last year, Congress imposed some federal standards on the nation's antiquated election laws to help prevent another fiasco like the 2000 election in Florida. Along with providing money to upgrade voting systems and improve registration procedures, the new law will also require first-time voters who register by mail to show some proof of identity, either a photo ID or some other government document. This minimal requirement will make it easier to ensure that only citizens vote, that they only vote once, and that they don't cast votes in the name of dead people.</p>