Comments on: Voter ID Laws Rankle Left

By: Orson Buggeigh

Orson Buggeigh — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:45:40 +0000

Voter ID makes very good sense. It is a reasonable compromise to protect the public from voter fraud. Mr. Toobin protests too much. The locations where voter fraud has historically been a problem have been, *ahem!* Democratic strongholds. I’m sure one reason some Democratic party operatives object is that it might abolish those fine old big city machine traditions of voting early and voting often, and the miracle of the dead being resurrected to vote (Democratic, natch!) in select precincts.

While there has been much made of the re-count in Florida in 2000, perhaps we should revisit the election of 1960. It might be interesting to re-count the ballots from the precincts in Texas and Illinois that allegedly were fraudulently cast, supposedly costing Richard Nixon the election.

Both parties try to do what they can to increase the turnout of people likely to vote for their candidates. However, it seems that everyone is better served by preventing fraud - and voter ID seems like a very reasonable means to do this. I don’t see it as inherently favoring one political party any more than another, unless one of the parties is cheating. In which case, the cheating party stands to lose more from voter ID than the party playing honestly. So why are the Dems so unhappy? Guilty conscience?

By: tonto

tonto — Sun, 25 May 2008 23:29:32 +0000

Robo is right. Do you really believe that they are going to give you a ’mail in ballot’ then let you walk in and vote again?

By: robocaller

robocaller — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:17:36 +0000

BJ, since only registered voters receive absentee ballots in the mail, I doubt its a huge problem. I assume by whatever means you get an absentee ballot, something is verified against registration databases.

By: BJ

BJ — Sun, 25 May 2008 18:41:47 +0000

Tonto,

Interesting, but doesn’t answer the question. I take photo ID down to the voting booth so they can match the photo to my face and ensure that it is really me voting. Who matches the photo to the face when you mail it in?

By: robocaller

robocaller — Sun, 25 May 2008 06:27:17 +0000

A lot of Democrats I’ve heard on this issue have stated that there is unambiguously no problem in our country with voter fraud. But one of the complaints of Republicans during the whole 2000 election season was that Democrats were involved in getting people who were not legal voters to the voting booths.

So with this "Legal scholar Jeffery Toobin thinks laws requiring voters to show a valid picture ID before voting are biased in favor of Republicans." Why is it not legitimate to question—maybe Democrats are involved in voter fraud efforts, and that’s why they don’t want a voter ID law.

By: tonto

tonto — Sun, 25 May 2008 00:02:42 +0000

The same way I just paid my traffic fine, with a photocopy of the ID.

By: BJ

BJ — Sat, 24 May 2008 23:48:49 +0000

I’m still waiting for someone to explain how they use photo ID to confirm the mail-in ballots.