Last week brought a very positive development, as a federal judge ruled that the federal government must modify national voter registration forms to accommodate proof-of-citizenship requirements lawfully passed in Kansas and Arizona. The Associated Press reports: Both [Kansas and Arizona] require new voters to provide a birth certificate, passport or other documentation to prove their U.S. citizenship to election officials. The federal registration form requires only that prospective voters sign a statement declaring they are citizens. Kansas and Arizona asked the federal agency for state-specific modifications, but it refused. The states and their top elected officials — Secretaries of State Kris Kobach of Kansas and Ken Bennett of Arizona, both conservative Republicans — sued the agency last year. Most voters in both states register with state forms, but their officials said the availability of the federal form created a loophole in enforcement of proof-of-citizenship requirements. Supporters argue the requirements preclude voter fraud by preventing noncitizens from voting, particularly those in the country illegally. “This is a really big victory, not just for Kansas and Arizona but for all 50 states,” Kobach told The Associated Press. “Kansas has paved the way for all states to enact proof-of-citizenship requirements.” And they should. In fact, the citizens of the United States should insist on tough federal requirements for voter identification, particularly in national elections where fraud from one state is nullifying legitimate voters in others. But a simple and uniform set of standards for all elections would be easier for people to understand, and frankly effortless for the vast majority of them to meet. Instead of wasting vast sums on turgid legal dramas to resist the inevitable, we could set some resources aside to assist every valid voter who needs help securing a proper ID. It’s beyond bizarre that our government thinks nothing about throwing billions of dollars into stupid money-pit programs, but acts like the virtually negligible expense of assisting the tiny number of people who have trouble complying with ID laws would be some unthinkable budget-busting expense. For that matter, private groups would probably be happy to step in and help, as they have done with a few high-profile hard cases over the last couple of years, with voters who had difficulty making the trip to the local elections office. Most of the other hard cases boil down to bureaucratic snafus that kept valid voters from meeting the identification requirements; the solution to those problems is to fix the damn bureaucracy, not force the rest of America to put up with ballot theft. Most of the silly “controversy” over voter ID laws is a last-gasp effort by liberals to keep a useful hot-button issue alive, even as the technological clock runs out on them. Are we still going to pretend that voter ID is impossible when retail stores are performing biometric scans on customers and presenting them with real-time personalized advertising, a la “Minority Report?” The Surveillance State is cheerfully amassing terabytes of information on every American, but we still indulge the pretense that properly identifying voters is a Herculean task, undertaken only by racists. Ballot protection is an area where “progressives” don’t seem very interested in progress.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 15:36:49 +0000
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