Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2007 > November > 05
Monday, November 5, 2007
Vote — with proper ID
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With elections tomorrow, Georgia’s photo ID requirement has resurfaced — as, indeed, it might until Democrats reclaim all power under the Gold Dome . The questions are about whether blacks in rural areas might represent a disproportionately high number of those without proper ID.
Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel takes great exception to AJC analysis that, she wrote in an opinion piece today, provided “blatantly misleading information that was clearly meant to scare voters and lead them to believe that their votes in Tuesday’s election may be dismissed without cause.”
She pointed out, yet again, that voters without proper ID can cast a provisional ballot, can vote absentee without photo ID and can, in any event, get free and proper ID at their county’s voter registrar’s office and at driver’s license offices. And, too, she noted, dozens of local elections have already been held with the ID requirement without problems.
On Voter ID, I’m in Handel’s corner.It always amazes me how much effort critics will expend protesting a reasonable effort to improve the integrity of the voting process — but never lift a finger to serve the population allegedly at risk. If there’s been any effort at all by those who complain to, say, run a car pool once a month to obtain the free IDs, it’s not been reported in anything I’ve read.
Yes, a photo ID requirement is a “barrier.” But so, too, is the requirement that voters be 18 or older, that they come to a designated place on a certain day to cast ballots, that they inconvenience themselves to vote absentee, that they not be felons, and that they verify eligibility. All are reasonable and all are legal.
To commentators, partisans and critics across Georgia, the time has come: Give it a rest. Move on. Photo ID is constitutional.
