It's Still A Poll Tax, Part Trois.

I suppose on a thread like this, one must declare his allegiance, and for me, it just seems ridiculous that you can vote without showing ID.

Having said that, I'll add this interesting twist for the sake of the conversation: Perdue sent out a campaign flyer that included an attached application for an absentee ballot.

Wait a minute, you mean to tell me the right to drink liquor isn't one of the country's founding principles?

 

Lyman, I agree with your assessment about abortion ... IDs SHOULD be required, as should parental permission.

But when it comes to voting, we need to make it easier, not harder. I know voter fraud happens but since we can't put a number on it, I'm guessing the number of people who COULD be disenfranchised far outnumbers the total of fraudulent votes.

 

Here's what tells you it's a poll tax: There hasn't been a big problem with voter fraud in Georgia. The governor "made up" the problem in an attempt to disenfranchise minority voters in Atlanta.

This whole argument is moot because it will NEVER become law.

Next I'm sure he'll try to bring back the Jim Crow laws, but that won't work, either.

It's a shame the courts' time and our taxpayer money has to be wasted with this crap.

 

Interesting article in Salon in which the author claims there is no constitutional guarantee of the right to vote.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/09/21/no_right_to_vote/print.htmlT

Today, even though "the right to vote" is by now mentioned five times in the amended Constitution, the federal courts continue to insist that voting is mostly a state matter. The Supreme Court restated the point in 2000, in Bush v. Gore. "The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States," said the Court, rather breezily, "unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College."

 

My first vote was for George McGovern (or, more properly, against Richard Nixon) in 1972.

I have voted in every election, general election, primary election, school board election ever since and I have never, never been asked for identification. You sign your name on the book. Each party can have a challenger at the polls and can challenge any vote.

Voting by absentee ballot is more convenient. In California, the law says you can vote absentee and don't need a reason. That's what I do - I can take time and fill out the ballot, which is important in California because there are usually from 6 to 12 public questions on the ballot and sometimes these are complicated. There is a similar law in Texas, because Ross Perot voted that way in 1992. In some states, the polls close at 7 pm. If you leave for work at 7 or 7:30 in the morning and don't return until 6, you have a very narrow window to vote. Years ago, Election Day was a holiday in a lot of states and people had the day off. Even today, there are laws which allow you to take off two hours to guarantee you can vote, but these laws aren't strictly enforced.

You look at what Perdue has tried here - it is clearly an effort to hinder African-Americans from voting. Anyone who says otherwise simply isn't being honest. Katherine Harris did the same thing in Florida - this was noted on election day. In 1981, Republican hired off-duty police officers and placed signs outside black polling places in New Jersey cities. I read in a book about Rosa Parks that the poll tax in the 1940s was something like $15 - the minimum wage at the time was about 40 cents an hour - do the math.

Election fraud does occur, but it is fairly low because turnout is usually low. To have real election fraud, you need to stuff ballot boxes and create larger numbers. The current state of election fraud is nowhere near the threat to American democracy as possible malfunction of ballots and the ridiculous disparity between resources of incumbents and challengers.

If the Democrats take control of Congress, you are going to see a big swing in political contributions. It happened in 1995 and it will happen again.

 

I recommend Alex Keyssar's "The Right To Vote" as the best history of the phenomenon there is. The Salon piece is dead on.
Also, Georgians, this guy's nuts too.
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/15566134.htm

 

Living in Maryland I'll tell you that one of the problems in the Maryland early voting law was that the few polling places available for early voting were in overwhelmingly Democrat registered areas. It wasn't dispersed around the state to allow all marylanders to vote early, only in certain places. Places that were selected by the Democrat controlled legislature, vetoed by the Repub gov and overridden by the veto proof Dem legislature.
. Maryland Constitutional Law requires that citizens vote in their local assigned precincts, so the early voting provision had the intedned effect to enfranchise only certain voters. Dems play the same games as Repub. This is the same state that gerrymandered its Congressional District to drive out 2 moderate Republican Congresspersons, so Maryland went from a state that had 4 Dems and $ Repubs in 2 Repubs and 6 Dems, merely by adjusting the boundry lines, and they did this a few years beofre Tom Delay.

 

But...but...Democrats are only fighting for fair elections...

 

Just curious, just because FB says an ID is a poll tax, doesn't make it so. Anyone have a Supreme Court case citation or even a Federal Circuit Court opinion that defines a poll tax as an identification card that costs money?

It's an easily solved problem, just make all Voter ID cards, photo ID cards and make it free. So when you register to vote you get an ID card with a picture, rather than the ID card I have without a picture. Do the same with a Social Security Card.

 

I still think you shouldn't have to show your papers in this country to vote.
However, 'yab's proposal, I believe, might actually have gotten past at least one court, whereas Sonny's is doomed everywhere except, maybe, Paraguay.

 

If you don't need ID to vote, why do you need a voter registration card?

 

Then why even have registered voters, anyone should just showup where they want and vote. If you live in St. Louis Missouri, you can drive over to Kansas and vote in their elections too.