Voter ID

Ever since the Tea Party "revolution," which franky, just turned into a rebranding of the republican party, there has been a large influx of voter ID laws in many states, all introduced by Republican legislators.  Voter ID laws are a peculiar issue.  Republicans, traditionally much more "keep the gubment out of my life" are demanding verification while democrats, traditionally more on the bureaucratic side, see it as a needless burden on certain populations.  Personally, I can definitely see a reason for having to show ID when voting but there are certain things about these new laws that make me very wary.  In nearly all cases it turns out that the law tends to impact certain populations more than other populations, namely ones that vote Democratic.  Many of the laws prohibit using student IDs, one of the big factors in electing Obama, while others require piles of documentation to obtain and ultimately, cost money.  I read of one instance where the documentation required consists of 3 different forms of proof of who you are.  I don't know about you, but at best I carry with me one form of identification, my driver's license, two if you count my social security card which really isn't much of an ID anyway.  The only other third possible one that I even have to my name, since student IDs usually don't count, is my birth certificate which is in my parents' safety deposit box.  That, all in all, just seems like a preposterous amount of ID needed.  The other issue is that requiring a photo ID to vote essentially equates to a poll tax and not just poll tax in the strictest definition of the term but one that is heavily unfavorable to more urban areas with high minority populations that have lower rates of people who even need ID since they don't drive.  Granted this isn't quite the same as the poll taxes of old which were deliberately designed to keep "undesirables" from voting, but it is still essentially someone having to pay to vote, which is wrong.


Last week at the New Hampshire primary, James O'keefe, master of editing his "sting" tapes to make up stories took on the New Hampshire system, showing how easy it was to commit voter fraud.  It was a pretty indicting presentation, even when considering who the source is.  There wasn't really any way to edit it to distort the truth like in the ACORN and NPR tapes, which were utterly false by the way, but there was a neat little repercussion that O'keefe and his team seemed to overlook.  They went into polling places, pretending to be people who had recently died long enough to be issued a ballot without showing ID.  Apparently they thought that upon completing their task, they could insist on going back to their car to get the ID and never coming back and that would get them out of actually committing voter fraud.  Well it turns out that nearly every single incident, and the evidence is in their own tape, they actually violated both New Hampshire and Federal voter fraud laws themselves.  Multiple times they can be seen and heard affirming they are the deceased person in question and accepting the ballot.  Frankly, I would love to see them prosecuted and thrown in jail, not so much for violating the laws, but for the insensitivity it took to take someone's identity, who had recently died and pretend to be them.  Did they for one second think of what the families and friends of the deceased in question would think of this?  If I was a family member I'd be outraged and looking into what legal options I had open to me.  This man, who in the past has shown he has no real moral compass, just put the icing on the cake with this and I hope he gets prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law as well as sued by the family members of the deceased whos identities were stolen.