Voter ID laws are not Racist
The intention is to disenfranchise Democrats not minorities.
With all the talk about voter fraud, hacking, Russian spies, and Siberian Candidate plants coming from the left side of the aisle these days, I’m beginning to miss the ole days when it was bloody-eyed right-wingers shouting absurd conspiracy theories into the ether. One need only compare the newly docile and cautiously optimistic Alex Jones, to the drum-beating “Resistance” leader Keith Olbermann (whose new diet appears to consist exclusively of chocolate covered espresso beans and sugar-free Red Bull) to see the tide has truly turned.
Back in those days the go-to liberal barb on election legislation was that voter fraud was a “non-issue” and “statistically irrelevant,” that voter ID laws were discriminatory, and that Republican lawmakers were being racist in their legislative intent.
There have been four presidential elections since the introduction of the Help America Vote Act — the first law to include an ID requirement for voting — it passed the senate unanimously, in the house, 362 to 63. After four elections, there’s plenty of data to investigate the issue
Voter ID laws aren’t inherently racist. They aren’t discriminatory. They don’t hurt minority voters. They don’t even hurt the Democratic party. The black vote increased this year despite the ID laws, though it turns out some came out for Trump instead of Hillary. Getting to the polls doesn’t seem to be the problem; perhaps minorities are not quite as helpless as soft bigots would have us believe.
Perhaps those with the wherewithal to find the polling place might also be capable of getting to the DMV. In fact, individuals living in urban areas, where minorities live in greater numbers, have better access to both DMV locations and voting booths.
The ACLU points out that “voting is a fundamental right, not a privilege.” Driving on public roads is a privilege, and one that requires ID. Gun ownership is another fundamental right, which like voting, as Mike Rowe reminds us, requires a lot of responsibility.
CNN contributor LZ Granderson opines that maybe ignorant people should not be allowed to vote, echoing an opinion I have heard from Clinton supporters, in anguished cries, after “stupid rural white voters” stole the election. (Let’s note that this opinion finds footing amongst right-wingers as well)(Let’s also note: encouraging Electors to swap their votes would be a terrible disenfranchisement of “stupid” — many of them deeply poor— voters, but not a “racist” one, so there will be no liberal superman swooping in to fix it, in fact he’ll be encouraging it).
In California, ignorant people aren’t allowed to own a gun — well, those ignorant of English or Spanish. A written test is required, available only in those languages. Naturalized Chinese-Americans may find themselves out of luck. Dyslexics and semi-literate individuals may too struggle with the test. Ardent gun control supporters will no doubt agree certain people shouldn’t have guns, but is literacy in English or Spanish a qualifying factor?
The cost of firearm ownership itself is deeply prohibitive to the impoverished. In Massachusetts, after a mandatory firearms safety course costing around $100 (and 4 hours time), the prospective gun owner pays an additional $100 for the license. Even in Dixie, Tennessee’s handgun permit at $115 and $50 to renew every 4 years is far more oppressive to the poor than their voter ID law: the state offers photo IDs for voting free of charge. A handgun permit in Chicago will cost you $900, three quarters of the monthly salary of a minimum wage earner. Paying the rent might be a priority. In Alabama a birth certificate, high school ID, or a Costco membership card are enough to obtain a free voter ID.
The first gun control laws were introduced to curb blacks access to weapons, and one could be so bold as to claim the current cost of gun permitting in many States is equally if not more oppressive to African Americans than the onerous task of getting to the DMV with a BJ’s membership card in hand.
Voter ID laws are unnecessary and disenfranchise the impoverished in the sense that their purported defenders, the Democrats, expend all their energy fighting to fix laws that do not statistically harm them instead of working to fix problems that do. As for Republicans, these laws have’t helped them win a single election, and have achieved nothing besides adding another superfluous set of regulations to the ever-growing Rattenkönig of Government and making the left’s constant assertion of racism in the Party all the more plausible, credible, and audible. Dump them.
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