Quote:
Originally Posted by firstdown
The only reason I can see why people object to this law is that they beleive that some people are to dumb to bring an ID to vote. Hell, even if they forget their ID they can still vote and their ID checked following the election. BTW that quote did not say one thing about voter ID.
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It's not that they are too dumb, it is that they have never had an ID or needed one. And the implication of your statement can't be misconstrued to mean anything other than for a citizen to show some kind of an identificaiton to "prove" their ability to vote.
There are two ways to prove citizenry and both require the government to be proactive in the verification process. One way places unnecessary burden upon the citizens and the other does not.
The burdensome way is what unscrupulous Republicans are doing which is to force citizens to spend money and energy to obtain a passport, birth certificate or a drivers license obtained by first proving citizenship. And if they don't have any documents at all they have to look to the government, the same government asking them to prove citizenship, to get more documents that show they are indeed citizens.
The unburdensome way is what we do here in Washington state. Anyone can show up to the DMV and register to vote or reigister online. Once the state has your information it checks your name and information against a database that contains all voters eligable to vote based on national citizenship and felons records. Once the election is complete the voting records are made available for participating parties to see and any party can challenge a voter's vote. The voter is then notified of the challenge and they have until the date the election is suppose to be certified prove that the challenge is unfounded.
At the end of the day what we in Washington state is what every state should be doing regardless of a citizens ability to show an ID. Common sense tells you that the government should proactively verify whether a voter can vote in an election cycle and if they can do that then why do you even need an ID? You can't tell me that the government that issued you an ID that proves your citizenship status doesn't know your citizenship status or can't verify it.
Innocent until proven guilty, you understand?