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April 27, 2005
Georgia Voting Part 2
LaShawn Barber has some thoughts about the voter ID situation in Georgia that I mentioned a few days ago here. She writes:
The most embarrassing (not to mention juvenile) behavior of these politicians is this:[S]everal black elected officials sang protest songs, wept and wrapped themselves in shackles; many Republicans responded with puzzlement at their colleagues reactions. (Emphasis added)Good grief. These people should be ashamed. Instead of taking a leadership role and helping the poor acquire ID cards, they stage ignorant protests like this. In 2005. Some of you may not know this, but slavery is over, and Jim Crow is dead.
If your reaction to reasonable voting requirements is to whine about disenfranchisement and act like buffoons, perhaps you shouldnt be voting anyway. Your sense of history is warped if you think this is reminiscent of an era where your grandparents and great-grandparents had to jump through unfair yet legal hoops to vote.
As long as the state makes it reasonable to get an ID and does not charge you for it, then I can think of no reasonable objections to requiring a picture ID for people to vote. (according to this story from the Macon Telegraph state IDs will be free for people who request them so they can vote) Without picture IDs it is far more likely that people will vote multiple times or vote when they are ineligible to vote (non-residents for instance). This is just as bad as not allowing an eligible voter to vote because a multiple vote can cancel out the vote of an eligible voter. There are plenty of recent incidents in places like Wisconsin, Washington, and Minnesota where people were able to vote multiple times or voted when they were not eligible to because the was no photo ID requirement. In the case of Washington this changed the outcome of the state's governors race and in the case of Minnesota and Wisconsin it may have changed who the state's electors voted for president. These are not minor glitches.
Posted by Pete at April 27, 2005 10:35 AM
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