Voter ID Nonsense
When Georgia passed its new voting law in 2021, our President and several big businesses, i.e., Delta and Coca Cola, responded on the side which criticized that State for requiring an ID to vote. (BTW, we don’t see/hear Delta Airlines fighting the requirement that a photo ID is required to board one of their flights.)
Major League Baseball canceled the planned, 2021 All Star game in Atlanta in sympathy. The damning rhetoric was deafening.
This piece is deliberate overkill of a point – indicating the inconsistency exemplified by the difficulty it would be to live in this country without a photo ID.
We’re to believe, for some reason, those of us walking around with ID’s are taking for granted the everyone has an ID – and for some legitimate reason there are millions who don’t have one and have difficulty getting one.
Some Democrats apparently think that black people are too stupid to know how to get an ID.
It’s not only demeaning to black people, but patently racist.
Most of us refuse to think that way.
Let’s list things requiring an ID in the United States. It’s a non-exhaustive list.
- Driving a vehicle on the streets/roads
- Boarding an airplane
- Purchasing, leasing, or renting a car.
- Renting a hotel room
- Buying a cell phone
- Entering federal buildings
- Obtaining Medicare/Medicaid
- Applying for food stamps
- Applying for welfare
- Applying for unemployment
- Using Social Security services
- Applying for a green card
- Buying a firearm
- Adopting a pet
- Joining a gym
- Buying alcoholic beverages
- Buying cigarettes
- Participating in political events
- Getting married
- Checking out a library book
- Joining the military
- Adopting a child
- Opening and using a bank account
- Sending a wire transfer
- Applying for credit
- Establishing a utility account
- Cashing a check
- Opening a retirement account
- Applying for a mortgage
- Buying a house
- Renting a house
- Renting anything
- Donating blood
- Filling a prescription
- Applying for a job or school
- Applying for a professional license
- Buying train tickets
- Visiting a doctor’s office or hospital
- Picking up mail from USPS, FedEx, UPS
- Getting vehicle registration
- Applying for a fishing/hunting license
- Buying insurance
Could it be that a number of people without ID’s don’t want to go near any government offices because there’s outstanding arrest warrants for them?
Voting Is a privilege granted to all citizens of the United States. That privilege is sacred and not to be taken lightly.
It’s nonsense to deem that presenting an ID to exercise that privilege is discriminatory.
35 States require an ID at the polls. The 15 other States have varying requirements, mainly providing some form of ID like a utility bill or bank statement. These 15 States do require a signing an affidavit and/or name, address, and signature in a poll book. Most of them put those votes in a separate ‘provisional’ category until the information provided is verified.
So, different States can have different requirements related to voter ID, but the citizen voters in each State have the prerogative under the Constitution to conduct elections in their own ways – if the courts deem those variations to be legal and not discriminatory.
Another major point to be made here relates to the recent attempt by Congress to take over the responsibility for elections in the States. Lots of people in the country have been lulled into the growth and expanding spheres of the federal government and forget that we are a republic. That simply means we are one country but made up of separate, independent States.
Different States have different laws for lots of things. For example, 11 States allow public imbibing of alcohol at age 18. That’s their business, not the feds. One size does not fit all nor should it.
That also means while each State has its own protocol for naming their assigned number of members to The Electoral College, their method of choosing those members is their business, not the feds. Recent arguments to eliminate the Electoral College would, in effect, wrest that Constitutional prerogative from the States and make presidential elections determined by a national majority vote.
With different States having different voting ID laws, there would be an outcry by either major political party that lost a presential election that the votes of the ‘former’ Electoral College would have had a different result – with different State, voting laws. You can bet if the “Voting Rights” bill passed, the next move would be on the Electoral College.
And so on.
It brings up one of my favorite sayings: “You can’t do one thing.”
Whenever you change one thing you at least change one other – and potentially many other things.
Let’s turn a deaf ear to the unsubstantiated, nonsensical attempts to eliminate voter ID laws.
It’s not too much to expect citizens to get a photo ID.
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Have a great and prosperous week.
Hug somebody.
References:
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-verification-without-id-documents.aspx
SPIDER Bites
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