Voter ID Is A Racist Conspiracy

Or so says the NAACP. Chairman Benjamin Todd Jealous was joined by civil rights hysteric Rev. Al Sharpton and ethics-challenged Rep. Charles Rangel to denounce the current wave of voter suppression laws. In case you don't know, simple, inexpensive and readily-available official ID required for voting purposes is "voter suppression."

In reality, the only voting that gets suppressed by requiring valid identification is fraudulent or illegal voting. But since Democrats count on those votes, they are outraged. The race card is always a good way of attacking reasonable and unburdensome law. The same party that required rigged voting tests to suppress black voting in the South now wants no requirements to vote.

Using class warfare and race warfare as his stalking-horses, Jealous appeared on the steps of New York City Hall to announce: "The rallies are intended to get this conversation out of the thought leader class and down to the street corners, so folks understand that their rights are being attacked. This is the greatest assault on voting rights, happening right now, that we have seen since the dawn of Jim Crow."

The sanctity of the ballot box has been eroded badly over the past few decades. Patriots gave their lives to get the vote, but today it's too much effort to get out of bed, go to a polling place, show your valid ID, and mark a ballot. Absentee ballots for unusual circumstances have been replaced with mail-in ballots for the lazy. Early voting takes place with weeks to go before the election, disregarding the fact that a lot can happen during those weeks. Physical presence at the polls is made to sound archaic. Oregon has already experimented with voting by I-Pad.

Voting is not something that ought to be made as easy as buying a new shirt on Amazon.com. The franchise was a right for which people fought hard, risked much, and treaured greatly. Now, it's devolving into something that you grudgingly work into your busy schedule, if you can. Or it's something annoying that interferes in your life, like having to stop at a red light. Registering to vote is an imposition on one's life, requiring that a form actually be filled out with some information. It could take as long as five or even six minutes. What a burden!

Those who are of the least value to society, the lazy and shiftless, don't want to be further burdened by having to prove they are who they say they are in order to vote. The same people who can fill out reams of paperwork to get those beautiful, easy-to-use EBT free-food-from-the-government cards are somehow being oppressed by having to do a great deal less to get a valid state-issued identification card.

But that's not what the NAACP thinks. Going after the national movement to require valid identification already in place in Kansas, Tennessee and Wisconsin, and about to go into operation in Texas and South Carolina, Jealous says the requirements are draconian and oppressive. On the day that Mississippi amended its constitution to require valid photo voter ID, he charged that blacks, Hispanics, senior citizens, people with disabilities, and the poor are less likely to have the required photo IDs. He also argues that others would be disfranchised like students with school IDs, those who don't carry ID on their persons, and (get this) women who have ID that doesn't reflect their married names.

What a load of horse manure. Anybody too lazy or mentally-deficient to do the simple, inexpensive task of getting a valid state-issued photo ID shouldn't be voting anyway. How many legal Social Security recipients didn't have to prove who they were by validating their identity? How many adults (i.e., voters) don't have either a driver's license or an easily-obtained state ID? Most states will issue the IDs for free if the registrant is in dire financial straits, and many will even provide public transportation or home visits by state officials to assist in obtaining the ID.

But the Democrats and the NAACP prefer the "vote early, vote often, vote fraudulently, vote illegally" path. Requiring people to show up at the polls with a valid ID and eliminating all other forms of voting except for absentee ballots issued carefully under very special circumstances should be the norm. But it isn't, and won't be. In fact, voting is made far too easy for those who have no stake in America's success, along with illegal immigrants, and in Chicago, dead people. On the other hand, soldiers risking their lives on foreign battlefields have their absentee votes disqualified on ridiculous technical grounds.

Jealous, Sharpton and Rangel all demand that the Attorney General investigate the constitutionality of voter ID laws and take action against the states which have them. This would be the same Attorney General who dismissed voter intimidation convictions against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia--cases which had already been won. In the House of Representatives, a group including the Black Caucus sent a request to all fifty state secretaries of state to oppose voter identification laws.

Joining the gang of three at the news conference were the United Federation of Teachers, the Health Care Workers Union, the National Council of La Raza and the Asian-American Legal Defense. Aside from the statements, the group has called for a national day of protest against the voter ID laws for December 10. I don't think I'll be joining them.