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Thanks to EJ Dionne for clarifying the Voter ID issue…

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  June 20th, 2011 at 09:00 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

…or, more accurately, the issue of voter registration fraud so comprehensively.  Not that he meant to, of course.  While whining about voter ID laws in Texas (and other states), Dionne wrote this sentence:

In Texas, for example, the law allows concealed handgun licenses to work as identification, but not student IDs.

Here, real quick: go find your old student ID.  Is there an address on it?  The answer is probably “no:” colleges don’t like to put anything on those things that would require them to be reissued every year.  College students – particularly ones that live on-campus – simply move around too much over the course of their time in school; and keeping track of a student’s current address is frankly not the school’s problem*. So you can expect name, picture, signature, and a bar code; some schools include date of birth, and other schools care more about cutting down on students drinking.  And that level of ‘identification’ is useless for verifying identity and establishing residency.  So, until there’s an established standard for student IDs that is actually useful for Voter ID purposes, get used to student IDs not being accepted.

The Texas C[HL] license, on the other hand, gives name, picture, physical description, date of birth, current address, and unique identification number; to get one you need (among other things) a Social Security number, a driver’s license, employment and residential history, a working email, and a major credit card.  In other words, it’s a great way to establish somebody’s identity and residency.  Which is why it was included in the final version of the Texas Voter ID bill.

Interestingly, Dionne didn’t really go into that – or what you can use to establish identity and residency in Texas in order to vote.  Here’s the list:

  • Driver’s license
  • State ID card**
  • Military ID
  • Concealed handgun license
  • Passport
  • Citizenship ID

But that’s a much less scary list than the ‘evil gun-owners versus disenfranchised students’ one that Dionne was peddling, which is probably why he didn’t use it.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: By the way, EJ Dionne… if you’re going to rip off draw from Dave Weigel’s work, the least that you can do is link back to it.

*If colleges started providing the student’s address-of-record – which would almost certainly be his or her parents’ address – well, that would make student IDs viable for identification purposes.  Of course, that would also be a dagger through the political heart of every Democratic politician who depends on the student population in college towns to keep them in office.  Which is probably the real reason why the Democrats hate Voter ID: it threatens to destroy the white liberal version of majority-minority districts.

**Dionne, later in the piece, made some rather risible claims about how card registration fees were functionally and ethically equivalent to poll taxes.  Please note that this form of ID is available, free of charge, from the Texas state government.

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  • throwback59

    is that illegals are allowed to go to college, correct? So even if the address was included, it wouldn’t include anything about citizenship (I’m assuming, of course that the illegal falsely registered to vote).

  • oldbird77

    You need an ID to drive, fly, work, and (most importantly) buy alcohol. Who are these people who have no ID’s? How do they function in society? How many college students actually have no government issued form of ID? I work part time checking ID’s at a bar near 2 large colleges and I find there are plenty of student with valid ID’s (and a few with extra, non-valid IDs they felt were worth the money and effort to acquire).

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    They could make US Passport Cards free.

  • acat

    And if the “student” can prove hardship (i.e. actual poverty) many States issue for minimal or no fees.

    Of course, that’s just another angle of the problem .. how can someone who’s actually impoverished be spending several thousand dollars a semester to go to college full-time?

    Mew

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    What makes you think state ID is free in all states?

    Also, I didn’t say anything about “students.”

    The fundamental claim on voter ID is that it’s a poll tax.

    Make the gov’t ID free and it’s solved. Period.

  • acat

    Did I say “all state” ? No, those are your words, not mine.
    Di you say “students”? No, those are my words.

    There are a number of charges the Left throw around regarding voter ID. One is “poll tax”, another is “racial discrimination”, as if the various DMVs somehow won’t issue drivers licenses or state IDs to people due to race.

    Oh, and there’s another *very* simple way the Fed and the Libs could resolve this. Make filling out and sending in a 1040 a requirement to vote. The IRS will mail you your voter ID card…

    Mew

  • johnt

    Knows it helped The O in ’08 and wants a reprise, is bitter that O may not win, even with the deceit and degrading of democracy he and other twisted leftists hope for, is counting on illegals and other human trash, and is furious that standards are set.
    You have ID you vote, no problem. An old tactic, accuse your opponent of the very thing you’re doing. And the little,owl like thing dares talk of “rigging”. How do you rig by and with proof? Stupid, hateful and hysterical, typical liberalism,[so called].

  • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack

    No wonder Dionne looks so utterly clueless as he casts for ways to oppose it.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Let me reformulate my point before we go off on a tangent.

    If the left truly believed that government identification is a tax, they could simply make it free nationally, undercutting any states that do voter ID programs without giving away free ID.

    Making US Passport Cards free would solve that.

    But they don’t want to do that, because their true motive is to allow voter fraud.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    But in the Obama economy that would hurt honest people!

  • acat

    I had misunderstood why you were involving the Fed when most States already solve this…

    Yes, the Libs can easily resolve the “poll tax” and even the “racist” allegations.. and yes, that they don’t says far more about them than it does about conservatives.

    The 1040 thing is a never-gonna-happen, obviously, but .. ya do need to provide all the key bits of information for positive identification to file one, and there are plenty of poor folk who file a 1040 to get their EIC credit checks, so .. it seems an amusing bit of sand to throw back at their gears.

    As for it hurting honest people, I don’t see that .. at least, not more than obtaining a FOID and CC hurt honest firearm owners….

    Mew

  • Jim Tomasik

    Lets let them do this as well.

    Or just not.

    The free passport idea would be a lot easier to deal with.

  • lineholder

    a modified voter ID bill, already passed by the House, has gone to the Senate. The original bill called for a $5.00 fee for voter ID cards. In light of the lawsuits going on in other states by orgs like ACLU claiming that even a nominal fee can be an imposition on a citizen’s right to vote and violation of NVRA, and then having the bill tied up in the court for years, the bill was modified.

    These orgs on the left are champions at playing our legal system as a stall mechanism in order to advance their own agenda. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but it seems to me that we have very few orgs on the right side of the political spectrum who are capable of fighting these legal challenges.

  • Kyle-MI

    One of the earlier states adopting voter ID was taken to court base on the whole poll tax issue. The courts ruled that states who required voter ID’s have to have some form of free ID available.

  • audax

    At least mine did…LOL!

  • audax
  • krutnewm

    I live in New York and you can get a non-driver ID card from the state for $9-$10 for a 4-5 year card or between $13-$14 for a card that is valid for 8-9 years.

    http://www.nydmv.state.ny.us/broch/c-33.htm

    How exactly is this prohibitive? In addition, for seniors (over the age of 62) who are receiving Social Security, there is NO charge ($6.50 if over 62 and not receiving SSI).

    Their argument has NO legs. They can not come up with a single verifiable argument against states demanding one to prove who they are with ID to vote.

    PS – it took me maybe 3 minutes to google the NY State Non-Driver ID page. The same can be done for all 50 states. Do this and throw the links in their faces. They have no response to this!

  • msctex

    Why not cover these supposedly uncovered bases by making whatever meaningless fees exist vanish, if you can provide your Food Stamps or Food Card when you go to register?

    Thus the poor and underprivileged will be in no way afflicted, and we can be sure of fair and honest elections. Which is what everyone really wants, right?

    We have entered a stage of Endgame where our job, as much as anything, is to force the Liberal Progressives to defend their positions publicly. This would seem to accomplish that, with little to no wiggle room.

  • mboyle1988

    I think voting should require specific voter id cards. You should have to swipe the card before you can access the voting booth. These cards should be free to avoid lawsuits. Sharron Angle and Norm Coleman would be senators without voter fraud, an Dino Rossi would be governor of Washington

  • victrola

    That would be an easy way to make sure all 50 states have honest and fair elections, and the public would support it overwhelmingly. If a state tried to “buck” this by not passing state voter ID laws, they’d be tossed on their ear. I’m tired of only the “Red States” having sensible Voter ID laws. The whole “poll tax” issue is easy, just make a hardship provision so the ID is free. Whatever it costs your state is money well spent, and at the end of the day, support for the law erodes without this, both in the courts and public opinion.

    These laws are no brainers, the public supports these laws 3 to 1. People don’t want potentially fraudulent votes canceling out their legitimate ones. Showing a state ID card is not a burden, people do it all the time for things far less important than voting.

    Everyone knows the only reason there’s resistance to this is because Democrats WANT to be able to use their oldest trick, voter fraud.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    It’s a state matter. Leave it to the states.

    It was wrong when the left used blackmail to impose the 55mph speed limit, and it’s wrong for us to try to expand the power of the national government over the states.

  • gpclaw
  • victrola

    There’s all sorts of things we currently tie to highway funding (DUI limits for example) Unless we scrap all of these laws first, I say we use the patchwork system we have to advance our agenda.

    If you want to get rid of the entire federal highway funding structure, fine, but until that point, we should use it when we can.

    I get so tired of conservatives falling on their swords for Federalism issues, and I would argue that the federal government should have a part to play in federal elections.

  • gpclaw

    then you probably aren’t very concerned about the right to vote. If a person values their right to vote, then they will make it a priority to invest both the time, and small some of money needed to get an ID.

    I realize that this may be an inconvenience to some. After all, there is only 16 and half months between now, and the next election.

  • gpclaw

    does not make it right. You either support federal overreach, or you oppose it. Reinforcing the use of federal tax dollars, just means that it will happen more often, likely in areas you don’t support (like healthcare).

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    By that argument you make, anything the Democrats do is retroactively constitutional because “the cat’s out of the bag.”

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens
  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    So used to typing “CCW” for this sort of thing… :)

  • aesthete

    For the House: “[...]the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature[...]”

    For the Senate: “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, (chosen by the Legislature thereof,)[...]”

    For the President: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress[...]”

    General state powers: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Place of Chusing Senators.”

    The federal government only guarantees states a form of republican governance: within that is a broad range that states are free to operate under. Appointment of electors and legislation surrounding elections within a republican context clearly rests with the states, and may only be abridged in the case of amendments (such as the 14th, the 15th, the 17th, the 20th and the 26th).

  • aesthete

    even if X is something that strikes one as logical or intuitive (such as establishing the rules for elections), is a purely normative statement. The law is based not on morality or intuitiveness, but custom and what is plainly written.

  • Adjoran

    He is good at disguising his arguments so they seem based on facts, but they seldom are.

    The old canard “ID requirement oppresses po’ peeps” is a joke. As noted above, ID is already required to drive, fly, cash checks, open a bank account, buy alcohol, or buy certain OTC medications. When the cost factor is raised, the leftists always reply to the clause giving poor people FREE state IDs with, “But so many of them can’t get a ride to the DMV wah wah wah …”

    In some cases, Republican officeholders have volunteered to personally drive anyone who fits that description, but of course that didn’t allay the Democratic concerns – because there never WERE any real “concerns.” Getting and showing ID is not a hardship in our society and hasn’t been for 40 years at least.

    The ONLY reason to oppose proof of ID to vote is to allow people to fraudulently vote for others. There is no other reason. You know it, I know it, and the Democrats know it. We just need to keep hammering it home.

  • victrola

    when I see you demand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 be repealed and left to the states. Do you see any modern Republican officeholders demanding it be repealed? These are the new rules of the game, I would prefer a more state-centric approach, but not moving forward with something like voter ID is not going to bring that back. To not pass common sense laws in order for some quixotic bid for purity is silly.

    The federal government is what stopped “Jim Crow” type voting laws in the South, and they most certainly have a role in federal election issues.

    To sit on our hands and allow election fraud because we have some sort of ideal in our heads of how things “should be” regulated by the states is actually short-sighted.

    Also, tying highway funds to state laws is not unconstitutional, you might not like the “sneaky” way it’s done, but no serious legal scholar on either side of the aisle thinks it violates the Constitution. If a state doesn’t want to take part, they are certainly free to refuse those funds.

  • aesthete

    The CRA’s Constitutionality, a long-standing bone of contention for legal positivists, has no bearing on the Constitutionality of what you are suggesting. There’s nothing wrong or unprincipled with the notion that past or existing damages to the Constitution do not justify future abuses — especially by our own side! We’ve been passing “common sense laws” in defiance of the Constitution for decades now, and have little to show for it. If a new law or function of government is truly as commonly-accepted as you claim, then it would be no large task to get it ratified through the Amendment process.

    As for Jim Crow voting laws, clearly the 14th and 15th Ams provided justification for their dismantlement at the federal level. The same cannot be said of voter fraud.

    Let me draw attention to a parallel situation: we will never have a perfectly free market. Very few people even desire a perfectly free market. Nevertheless, it would be folly for conservatives to attempt to make the Republican party the party of welfare for middle class suburbanites. Likewise, our system will never adhere perfectly to the Constitution. Even so, we will get better results from one party adhering to the Constitution (even when inconvenient) than from having both parties treat it as a dead letter. Even in its diminished and truncated form, the Bill of Rights and Constitution are a sight better than what other countries have — that’s worth keeping.

  • juumanistra

    The bulk of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was firmly ground in the post-Civil War constitutional order: Jim Crow was facially abhorrent to the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection and Privileges and Immunities Clauses, with Section 5 of the 14th Amendment providing the legitimate vehicle for the rectification of the problem. (The only odious section being Title VII, which is also the section of the CRA that continues to cause the most trouble to this day.)

    Despite all of that, the CRA as passed at the time has nothing on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, in which the federal government expropriated for itself the power and right to determine electoral procedures for half-a-dozen states, ignoring pesky things facts like how the Fifteenth Amendment never contemplated anything nearly as radical as Section 5 of the VRA enacted.

  • romeg

    than a standard Hit Piece against conservatives in general and Southern Conservatives in particular. It is one more serving of the tripe which is the specialty of the house of Chez Dionne.

    Is it true that he and David Brooks are getting married?

  • victrola

    I can understand not liking the way it’s being carried out, but that doesn’t mean it’s unconstitutional (liberals are usually the ones that think everything that doesn’t jive with their worldview simply MUST be unconstitutional) The precedent of “this for that” highway funding has been established and is settled law, if you want to rearrange the way highway funding is doled out on the federal level, that is a completely separate issue.

    Again, I find it intellectually dishonest for someone to say they’re against the federal government “nudging” states to pass Voter ID laws with highway funding on the grounds of federalism, but you have no issue with current federal laws like the Voting Rights Act or the Civil Rights Act (which are a much more clear violation of the Commerce Clause) and have no desire or will to see Conservatives push to have these laws repealed on the grounds of federalism because it’s politically inconvenient to make that particular case. Clearly, federalism is only sacrosanct when it’s easy.

    If there was a federal law banning racial preferences in all 50 states, I would of course support that. You can make the case that’s violating the Commerce Clause, but I would argue we’re already working within a system that is in violation of that, and to not make the flawed system we have better strikes me as a great example of the “perfect being the enemy of the good”.

  • aesthete

    The amendment system was specifically designed to address your concerns. Tying every issue under the Sun to highway/Medicaid funding is the weasel’s way out of having to deal with such a process. It is nothing short of blackmail to take money from the pockets of a state’s citizens and to withhold it from that state unless said state makes changes in keeping with what federal authorities desire. Would this be Constitutional if it were applied to any of the federal government’s other functions — say, refusing to protect states from invasion unless they comply with the federal government on whatever they please?

    The status quo that you allude to may be settled case law, but so is the current ban on school officials initiating a voluntary, secular moment of silence for prayer (Wallace v Jaffree), the current status where federal authorities can make sweeping regulations in the economy and of course the “right” to kill an unborn child (do I even have to cite the cases here?). It is very likely that ObamaCare will be found Constitutional using prior caselaw (Raich v Gonzales comes to mind).

  • victrola

    I don’t like where the country has evolved with respect to federal powers, but let’s address that issue head on. I don’t see how unilaterally disarming ourselves on peripheral issues will somehow advance the case for federalism.

    With respect to your examples, if there was a federal law saying they would withhold federal funds from a public school that didn’t allow a moment of silence for prayer, I would support it. I would also support federal laws that had stricter limits on abortions. You could argue both should be strictly contained within individual states, but that’s simply not reality, and my goal is to make the current situation better, not wait for Utopia to come to me.

    It’s a bit like saying conservatives should boycott voting for any Senator, since the Founder’s intent was clearly that State Legislatures choose our Senators, and the 17th Amendment is an abomination to State’s rights. By participating in Senate elections, we are therefore endorsing this new structure. Of course this sounds silly, but I think it’s no different. At the end of the day, we have to work with the rules we have now.

  • cpaguy

    Conservatives can’t use big government as a club to advance their causes.

    Let the state’s have as much freedom as possible. Sure, they all might not be as conservative as we like, but that is OK.

  • spinoneone

    does not prove one’s citizenship, one of the more important pre-requisites to voting in Federal elections. In looking at the Texas law I see no reason why a legal permanent resident who was also a resident of the State of Texas would not be eligible for concealed carry permit so long as s/he met the other requirements. The law requires an “original or certified copy of you birth certificate” but does not specify that it has to be a U.S. birth certificate.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    You need to prove citizenship to get on the voter rolls. You only need to prove identity to vote.

  • steve010

    Chief Marxist cheerleader, EJ Dionne said in June 2011 about voter identification laws:

    ?Whether or not these laws can be rolled back, their existence should unleash a great civic campaign akin to the voter registration drives of the civil rights years. The poor, the young and people of color should get their IDs, flock to the polls and insist on their right to vote in 2012.

    If voter suppression is to occur, let it happen for all to see. The whole world, which watched us with admiration and respect in 2008, will be watching again.?

    Guess what? This was done in FL in 2008. We had a requirement in 2008 that the voter had to show state ID (driver license) at the polls. And no suppression occurred. And the poor, the young and the people of color flocked to the polls and his dude won the EV. So, what the heck are you people talking about?

  • aesthete

    THERE IS AN AMENDMENT PROCESS! The 17th is an amendment, which makes it perfectly fine (and Constitutional) to vote for a Senator. You have.completely and entirely failed to make a case that the Constitution allows the situation that you describe, and I would be terrified to find that other conservatives are as enthusiastic about utilizing un-Constitutional mechanisms as you appear to be. You call retaining the few Constitutional protections that we have – and attempting to reclaim a parcel of our federalist system – peripheral. I’d say that voter fraud is much more peripheral: we’ve survived for centuries without such protections, despite the worst of machine politics and Tammany Hall machinations. We would not survive having two parties and ideologies that would dismantle the Constitution for peripheral issues as you suggest. Your prescription has been followed for close to 50 years now, and found wanting.

  • dbkohl

    I like that Idea.

  • dbkohl

    I like that Idea.