Voter ID: Racist or Prudent?

When the Legislature returns later this month, the Pennsylvania State Senate will consider a bill, thought to be controversial by some, that would require each voter to be identified at the polls.

The State House has already passed a bill to require voters to show a government-issued photo ID containing their name and address. Gov. Tom Corbett has indicated his willingness to sign the bill into law. Then-Gov. Ed Rendell vetoed a similar bill in 2006.

According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 75 percent of Americans, including those of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, support voter-ID laws. Americans clearly understand that voter ID is a sensible approach to protect the security and integrity of the election process.

At the beginning of the American Republic, individual states wrote voting rules. In most places, only free, male landowners were allowed to vote, although several states enfranchised freed black landowners. By the time of the Civil War, most white men were eligible voters whether or not they owned property.

In 1866 and 1920, the 14th and 19th Amendments to the Constitution, respectively, granted former male slaves and women the right to vote. Today, all (non-felon) citizens, natural-born and naturalized, have voting privileges.

It’s true that even after the right to vote became more broadly granted, literacy tests, poll taxes and, occasionally, religious tests were used to limit voting rights in various jurisdictions, especially in the South. But, today those impediments to voting have been outlawed everywhere.

A number of states, some historically liberal, others conservative, have recently passed voter-ID legislation, including Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. Georgia and Indiana implemented voter-ID laws years ago. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, as many as 30 other states are considering similar legislation.

Opponents of voter-ID advance two seemingly plausible but equally untrue arguments: 1) There is no need for such bills because there is no voter fraud, and 2) The bills are attempts to disenfranchise minority voters who often don’t have photo ID.

Beginning in 1998, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has had employees in 14 states, including in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny and Berks Counties, charged with violating election laws. ACORN employees submitted many thousands of false registrations. Those are merely the violations officials have discovered.

Officially, ACORN works to register voters and arrange housing. In reality, ACORN members are hardcore supporters of the Democratic Party. The Obama administration and congressional Democrats arranged to repay ACORN with stimulus funds for the organization’s support.

Some will remember ACORN as the organization whose employees were caught on film offering assistance to find housing for child-prostitution rings. Discredited, ACORN has not dissolved, but some of its local affiliates have taken on new names to suggest they’ve cut ties with the organization.

Employees of the Service Employees International Union, the same organization that recently organized, bankrolled and led the J-1 visa student-worker protests in Hershey, have also been caught submitting huge numbers of fraudulent voter registrations.

SEIU gave 95.3 percent of its 2008 campaign contributions to Democrats, including millions to the Obama campaign. Before he retired, former SEIU President Andy Stern was the most frequent visitor to the Obama White House.

Voter registration and voting fraud are real.

Considering the money involved and the fraudulent votes they harvest, it is no surprise that Democrats oppose voter ID. One can allow for the possibility that Republicans may engage in voting irregularities, too, but that case is difficult to make in Pennsylvania where Republicans are at a registration disadvantage but are nevertheless promoting voter-ID legislation.

But what should we make of the charges of racism in voter-ID legislation? Do minorities buy drinks, fly on commercial airlines, rent housing, buy housing or rent cars? Do they cash checks, take out loans, use credit cards or own and drive personal vehicles? All of these activities require photo IDs, yet Americans don’t view the requirement as unnecessarily burdensome.

It’s estimated that, nationwide, Pennsylvania included, more than 99 percent of eligible voters have a photo ID that meets the requirements of the legislation. The other less than 1 percent would be provided the document they need at no personal cost.

Does anyone else find it odd that those who criticize voter-ID legislation never detail what they think would be acceptable proof of identity? One suspects that the critics who describe more stringent voter-ID requirements as unnecessary or racist are really advocates for the lax voter requirements from which they benefit.

Annville native Shenk writes from West Hanover Township. Email [email protected].