Posted on 01/04/2012 5:59:43 AM PST by Kaslin
The most consequential election in our lifetime is still 11 months away, but it’s clear from the Obama administration’s order halting South Carolina’s new photo ID law that the Democrats have already brought a gun to the knife fight.
How else to describe this naked assault on the right of a state to create minimal requirements to curb voter fraud?
On Dec. 23, Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez sent a letter ordering South Carolina to stop enforcing its photo ID law. Perez, who heads the Civil Rights division that booted charges against the New Black Panther Party for intimidating voters in Philadelphia in 2008, alleged that South Carolina’s law would disenfranchise thousands of minority voters.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson rejected Perez’s math and explained on Fox News why the law is necessary. The state Department of Motor Vehicles audited a state Election Commission report that said 239,333 people were registered to vote but had no photo ID. The DMV found that 37,000 were deceased, more than 90,000 had moved to other states, and others had names not matched to IDs. That left only 27,000 people registered without a photo ID but who could vote by signing an affidavit as to their identity.
Wilson told me by phone on Thursday that he would file a challenge to the order in federal district court in January. Asked whether he felt South Carolina was being singled out, he declined to speculate on motives. However, citing the National Labor Relations Board’s orders to invalidate the voter-approved union card check amendment and to stop a new Boeing plant, and the Justice Department’s suit to halt the immigration law, he said, “there certainly is a pattern of the federal government overreaching into South Carolina.”
Leading Democrats loudly equate recently enacted photo ID legislation as updated versions of Jim Crow laws that once robbed people of their constitutional right to vote simply because of their race. But photo ID laws and other voter integrity measures cover everyone. Like other states, South Carolina provides photo IDs if a person cannot afford one.
The U.S. Constitution empowers the states to enact voting procedures with minimal input from the national government, such as setting the voting age and election days for federal offices. The Fifteenth and Nineteenth amendments ensure that no one is denied the right to vote based on race or sex.
In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which authorizes the U.S. Attorney General or a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to review changes to voting procedures or redistricting in nine states (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia), some counties in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota, and some townships in Michigan and New Hampshire.
Congress did so to counter clearly established patterns of voter intimidation of blacks. Now, the Justice Department, which, under Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. could be renamed the Retribution Department, looks the other way depending on the race of the parties involved.
In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s 2005 photo ID law, which the Democratic Party and several interest groups had challenged as a “severe burden.” But, as American Civil Rights Union attorney Peter Ferrara noted in the ACRU’s friend of the court brief:
“No one has been denied the right to vote by the Indiana Voter ID Law. The record clearly establishes without challenge that 99% of the Voting Age Population in Indiana already has the required ID, in the form of driver’s licenses, passports, or other identification. Of the remaining 1%, senior citizens and the disabled are automatically eligible to vote by absentee ballot, and such absentee voting is exempt from the Voter ID Law.”
Does that sound “severe” to you? As Ferrara notes, “the slight burden of additional paperwork for a fraction of 1%, to show who they are and thereby prove their eligibility to vote, cannot come close to outweighing the interests of all legitimate legal voters in maintaining their effective vote.”
In 2005, a bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III found no evidence that requiring photo IDs would suppress the minority vote. The panel recommended a national photo ID system and a campaign to register voters.
In a 2008 column, Mssrs. Carter and Baker cited a study by American University's Center for Democracy and Election Management that echoed the election commission. Among other things, researchers found that in three states— Indiana, Mississippi and Maryland — about 1.2 percent of registered voters had no photo ID.
The Obama Administration is playing the same race card that Democrats have played for decades. But this is not about race; it’s about whether legitimately cast votes will be wiped out by illegally cast votes.
In Chicago, a federal investigation of the 1982 gubernatorial election estimated that at least 100,000 illegal votes had been cast and that voter fraud had been routine for many years. In 1960, Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Chicago Democrat machine almost certainly sealed John F. Kennedy’s presidential election by delaying reporting by Democratically-controlled precincts and counting them for Kennedy.
Republican Richard Nixon had a compelling case for a challenge, but chose not to do so. The media would have crucified him as a sore loser without seriously investigating fraud allegations.
Conversely, in 2000, when Democrat Al Gore challenged George W. Bush’s razor-thin victory in Florida, the media flogged Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris because she refused to overlook “hanging chads” and other questionable vote-counting.
Since the GOP took a majority of governorships and legislatures in 2010 and continued enacting voting safeguards, you can feel the panic in Democratic strongholds.
The stakes are enormous, and the Obama Administration is quite aware of the danger posed by an aroused electorate on a level playing field.
With the economy in a ditch, their only hope of stemming the conservative tide might be to rig the returns, especially where political machines still prevail.
“should have” a social security card...but do they? If they don’t work, they probably figure they don’t need one. But, it would be too, too much to demand a social security card, besides, the person could say “the privacy act forbids you seeing my SSN and thus my SS card.”
Unions fight voter ID on behalf of their bought-and-paid-for Democrat party, but require photo ID for union elections...
Hmmm... raise the voting age to 21 and much of that problem would be taken care of.
Obama's so important he's got five of them.
I'd say this is a flat out lie. Requiring photo IDs would severely suppress the minority vote. It wouldn't suppress the LEGITIMATE minority vote, but it would suppress the minority vote.
From that statement, I infer that there are or were 33 states that do require it and if that's so, why is the fed gov going after South Carolina?
Here in deep-blue Connecticut, we’ve had voter ID for many many years.
Why isn’t the Obama administration going after Connecticut?
A: Because it is a DEM “safe” state.
Why would a prominent, national party be opposed to a law, voter photo IDs, that would decrease voter fraud? That same party that doesn’t question the right of authorities and business concerns to ask for photo IDs in many other transactions and procedures. I think we know the answer.
Yes we do know the answer, and it is obvious
Yep my SS card says “not to be used for identification” all the new ones don’t. Our legislature in NC tried to pass a bill but the Dem Gov vetoed it. In this state even the handicapped have to have a photo id to get benefits, but when it comes to voting a worker at a group home can take 6 of them to the polls and fill out the forms for them. I actually saw a “dead woman” vote in the last election. A person brought her out of a rest home and I swear she must have been over 100. While the elderly woman sucked air, pissed herself and stared off into space her “helper” voted for zero. My opinion, if you can’t produce a photo ID you shouldn’t vote. Even that doesn’t guarantee you’re not a village idiot! I am disenfranchised because I am a white “Anglo Saxon male”. I’m ready to file a law-suit. Anyone want to join me????? Oh I forget, it’s ok to piss on me and get away with it.
The objections are of the “yes, but” variety. Yes, an officially recognized form of ID is a prerequisite. But the process of obtaining that officially recognized form of ID are “too intimidating” for persons of such low self-esteem they cannot bear to carry a picture of themselves in their wallet.
Yes, the need to keep fraud at a minimum is agreed to in principle. But the agenda of the Democrat minority in this country cannot hope to compete with the much more fact-based and relatively logical program presented by the (more conservative) Republicans, and to overcome this disadvantage, it is essential for the Democrats that the “right kind” of voters get to the polls, and that may involve getting persons without verifiable authority to cast a ballot in favor of their promises.
This notion of abolishing voter id is straight out of the Idi Amin playbook. bo and holder are simply following his rules. Ask yourself how many nations, cities run by africans are not full of corruption and crime. It is the culture.
anything the democrats don’t like is a poorf it’s a good thing.
Anything the democrats don’t like is a proof it’s a good thing.
TN is one of the states who requires for the first time a photo ID. I have a voter registration card which has my ss number, my voter registration # and my name and address. It lists my voting precinct and location, county district, city ward, school district, State House, US Senate and the date when I registered which was December 27, 1979. The clerk always asked me if my address is still the same. She then checked on the computer, gave me a paper to sign and mark for what party I was going to vote (primary election)and then send me on with the instruction to give the paper to the helper? I never had to show my drivers license. Since my drivers license does not have a picture on it, I’ll show my military Dependent ID card. (Here in TN a photo is not necessary from age 60 on.)
How can you hold a meaningful election if voters need not prove who they are and that they are eligible to vote. Sounds like something a third world country would sanction, Pardon me
the US is struggling to become a third world country. Obama will see to that and when he does you won’t need elections, Castro Doesn’t.
Having a valid social security card is no proof that you are a citizen and therefore eligible to vote. I am a naturalized citizen, and I got my social security card and my TN drivers license when I was a legal resident. I showed my green card and my military dependent ID card. I would not dream of voting before I became a citizen.
On the back of the california drivers license.. it say..this license is issued as a license to drive a motor vehicle. It does not establish elegibility for employment,voter registration, or public benefits...
“...so, why is the fed gov going after South Carolina?”
Truth - To ensure ability to commit vote fraud.
Holder’s Excuse - “S.C. has a history of disenfranchisement...”
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