Wednesday, December 12, 2007

NY Times: Requiring Voter ID Harsh, Extraordinarily Strict

The new York Times editors are doing a bit of preemptive whining before the 2008 election.

You would think by the rhetoric voters would be required to hand over their first born before they're able to vote.

All of it over Indiana requiring valid identification.

The horror of it all.

Minorities, poor, elderly and handicapped hardest hit, of course.

In 2000, the Supreme Court decided that George W. Bush was the winner. In 2008, the court may once again have something to say about the election — but this time, it may do it before the votes are even cast.

The court will hear oral arguments next month in a critically important election case. Crawford v. Marion County Election Board is a challenge to Indiana’s harsh voter ID law.

The law, pushed through by Republicans in 2005, requires registered voters who cast ballots in person to provide current government-issued photo ID.

Indiana’s law is extraordinarily strict: it requires voters to have not just photo ID, but very specific forms of it — most likely a driver’s license or an ID card issued by the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

At first blush, voter ID laws may not seem so unreasonable. But the fact is, a substantial number of Americans who are registered to vote do not have official government photo IDs. That is particularly true of poor people, racial minorities, the elderly, and the disabled — many of whom do not drive and do not have drivers’ licenses.
My heart just breaks. An effort to prevent voter fraud is being decried by the same people who turned a blind eye to voter fraud, most often by Demmocrats.

Well, these folks have 11 months to get their act together. If they can't get a valid government ID in that time, it's their problem.

The piece continue in heart-tugging fashion.
If the 2008 election is close, Americans will be looking at things like the decision in this case to figure out what provided the victory margin. It would be tragic if a sharply divided Supreme Court decided a presidential election for the second time in eight years.

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