Republicans have made it clear they will stop at nothing to keep President Obama from being re-elected to second term — even if it means depriving certain minority groups of the right to vote.
Republican-controlled legislatures in more than a dozen states have passed laws requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification at the polls in November.
Similar efforts are going on in 33 states, including Louisiana.
Why are Republican-controlled legislatures passing these laws? Is there evidence of substantial voter fraud in U.S. elections?
Our Lone Star neighbor has been the center of the Voter ID debate, as many prominent groups, including the United States Attorney General declared that the state’s requirements were among the most oppressive, amounting to the equivalent of a poll tax.
And last week, a federal court unanimously agreed that Texas that “the laws will almost certainly have a retrogressive effect: it imposes strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor, and racial minorities in Texas that are disproportionately likely to live in poverty.”
Proponents of voter ID laws argue that strict measures are necessary to prevent voter fraud. However, evidence shows that voter impersonation is rare.
Each act of voter fraud risks five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, while producing at most one incremental vote.
Because voter fraud is inherently irrational, it shouldn’t be surprising that there is no credible evidence of its existence in our country.
A nationwide analysis conducted by News21, a Carnegie-Knight investigative reporting project, discovered ten cases of voter impersonation out of the total 2,068 alleged election fraud cases have occurred since 2000.
National Weather Service data indicates that Americans are struck and killed by lightning as often as voter fraud occurred in the 2004 Ohio election.
The justification for states, such as Texas, to pursue strict voter ID laws can only mean they are motivated by a particular policy agenda: keeping Obama from being re-elected.
Approximately 25 percent of African-Americans do not possess any form of government identification, according to several recent studies, including one by the Brennan Center for Justice.
Many Americans born outside of the country also lack the papers, like a birth certificate, required to obtain a drivers license or state ID.
In order for those lacking a government-issued photo ID to vote, they would need to travel to a Department of Public Safety office to get an election ID card. This process requires that you verify your identity, which often means paying $22 for a certified copy of a birth certificate.
If passed, these restrictive voter ID policies will make voting a significantly harder task, primarily for certain demographics.
Given the meager evidence of voter fraud, these voter ID laws are not only a discriminatory attempt to keep minorities and low-income groups from voting, but a deliberate plan to disenfranchise a large population of the Democratic Party.
