New Yorker Article Calls Voter ID Laws What They Really Are: Racist and Classist

Jeffery Toobin of the New Yorker magazine has a great article out in which he points out that Indiana's law requiring voters to produce a state-issued photo identification before they vote is actually an attempt to make sure poor blacks and whites can't vote. The reason why this article appears is that the United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on Wednesday, January 9, 2008, on whether this law is unconstitutional. What is interesting is that while the state of Indiana claims that it is designed to stop voter fraud, it can't point to one case in Indiana in which a person has posed as another person to cast a vote. Meanwhile the New York Times points out that in Indiana there are at least two real people, one an elderly Democrat and the other an elderly Republican who also happens to be Afro-American who couldn't cast valid votes because of Indiana's law.

Ever since 1960 Republicans have been muttering about supposed election law violations by Democrats where people show up and vote illegally. Of course, when pressed to actually point out examples of such cases, they can't. The lack of evidence doesn't stop them, though, from making the claim or having their media shills like Rush Limbaugh make the claim.

Ohio, of course, has its own version of voter identification. Interestingly, though, voters who vote absentee don't really have to produce copies of such identification. Instead all they have to do is give the last four digits of their Social Security number or their Ohio driver license's number to vote. Now, if you stop and think about it, it is more likely that someone will try to commit fraud by mail, where they don't actually have to appear in front of a real live person, than commit fraud in person. Given that the purpose of these voter identification laws is to prevent fraud, why the difference in treatment between absentee and in person voters?

Well, here is the difference. A lot of Republicans have second homes in places like Florida and so the Republicans want them to vote. Thus, they make it easy to vote by absentee and harder to vote in person because they think that such actions will only disenfranchise Democrats. The Republican philosophy of government is built on the idea that some Americans are more worthy than other Americans. The hetrosexual is more worthy than the homosexual; the religious more worthy than the athetist; the wealthy more worthy than the poor; and the absentee voter more worthy than the in person voter.

The way for Democrats to make this work for them is to encourage voting by absentee ballot. The way to encourage such voting is to flood Democratic areas with absentee ballot applications; to have volunteers pick up such applications and take them to the local boards of elections; then to make sure that people receiving absentee ballot forms actually vote. Given the fact that Ohio has a Democratic governor, there is little that the General Assembly can do to defeat such tactics. If Ohio Republicans want to make it easier to vote absentee than in person, then Ohio Democrats should help them out.