Where you come down on this issue really depends on whether you think it’s reasonable to require the minimal effort to establish your identity of producing an ID at the ballot box or not. The critics say that in-person voter fraud is extremely rare, although that is not an argument for leaving the system completely open to it. As my colleague John Fund points out, the New York City Department of Investigation last year had undercover agents try to vote as persons who were in jail, had moved, or were dead. They were successful 61 out of 63 times. Is voting so important that it shouldn’t be tethered to an ID requirement? That’s not how we treat other important rights, as Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation notes. It takes an ID to buy a gun, a constitutional right. It takes an ID to get a marriage license or check into a hotel. No one goes around complaining that these requirements infringe on the rights of minorities to own a firearm, get married, or avail themselves of public accommodations. Voting is inevitably going to require, even in the most latitudinarian states, some effort. You have to, at least most of the time, go to the polling place. You have to fill in the bubbles correctly. You have to deposit your ballot in a box. Not all people will go to the trouble to do this, or to do it correctly, which doesn’t mean they are disenfranchised. The irony is that unhinged complaints about voter ID are, in this supposedly troubling new era of the poll tax, a turnout tool.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 12:00:01 +0000