Sob Stories and Voter IDs

Is it unfair to ask that a voter produce photo identification before being allowed to cast a ballot? The Washington Post seems to think it is. Here’s a heart-rending story of disenfranchisement:

On Indiana’s primary day, Rep. Julia Carson shoved her congressional identification card in a pocket, ran out of her house and raced down the street to be at her polling site when it opened at 6 a.m. The Democrat, seeking to represent Indianapolis for a sixth term, showed the card to a poll worker, who told her it was unacceptable under a new state law that requires every voter to show proof of identity.

The law compels voters to show an ID, issued by Indiana or the federal government, with a photograph and an expiration date. Carson’s card was for the 109th Congress, but did not say when the session ends. “I just thought I was carrying the right thing — if you have a card that has a picture and shows it is current,” she said.

Let me say that if she really thought that, she’s not qualified to be an elected official. One thing, if they know nothing else, elected officials should know is what is required to vote in their state. But at least it had a happy ending, thanks to a forgiving poll worker.

n the end, the poll worker telephoned a boss, and Carson was allowed to vote for herself in the five-way primary. But her close call in the light turnout of the May primary, she and other Democrats say, foreshadows turmoil and votes that are not counted when the nation goes to the polls for Tuesday’s midterm elections.

The implication here is that, save for some intervention, Rep. Carson would have been turned away. Her vote would be one of those the Post says “are not counted”.

That’s simply not true.

Here’s what would have happened had Carson’s ID been ruled invalid under her state’s law. She would have been allowed to vote on a provisional ballot, which would have been kept secure at her state’s local Board of Elections office for a certain amount of time until her identity could be positively ascertained. Most commonly the voter simply has to produce a valid identification some time after the election. In cases where the voter can not come to the election board most, if not all, election boards will send someone to the voter.

Thus, every vote can be counted. The only thing that stops a voter from having their vote count is their own unwillingness to put forth the minimum effort required to have a free and secure election.

Look also at the story which closes the article. The reporter is very clear to always have a “but” every time a point in favor of IDs is raised but seldom does the same for the anti-ID arguments. This is an excellent case in point.

The law enables people without a driver’s license to get a free state ID at Bureau of Motor Vehicle branches. But first they need an official birth certificate and other documents, and some Hoosiers are discovering it is difficult to get one in time.

Well, define “in time”? How soon did many of these unnamed and unnumbered “some” voters didn’t start until just a week or so ago? How many of them didn’t bother to get the information they needed – information that is generally pretty darned easy to get – when they first found out they needed it.

I’m sorry, folks. Their procrastination is their fault. But there are exceptions and this may be one of them.

Jowana Peterson, 51, of Indianapolis lost her wallet with her license inside a few weeks ago. When she went to replace it, she brought a copy of her birth certificate from Chicago, her Social Security card, her ID card from her job as a financial planner and four utility bills. “They turned me out cold,” she said, telling her she needed a new birth certificate from Cook County. She has applied, but it has not yet arrived. Because she had signed up to work at the polls on Election Day, she was eligible to get an absentee ballot, but she worries about other would-be voters who cannot get one — or do not know to ask.

She has no reason at all to worry, if she a minimally-competent poll worker. See, the voter does not have to ask for a provisional ballot. The poll workers must offer them one. There is no option here. If a voter who is not eligible to vote using the conventional means can not do so becuase they can not legally verify their identity, the poll workers do not wait for them to ask for a provisional ballot. The voters also often get one-on-one attention from a poll worker who is given special training in handling provisional ballots – something they would not ordinarily get using the voting machines.

That’s the way it works down here in Maryland. I know this because I’ve been a poll worker for the past two election cycles. If Ms. Peterson worked at my polling place and displayed the ignorance she does in this quote, we’d be letting the Chief Judge know about it because she’s dead wrong.

This final quote is just slanted and unnecessary.

Even so, she says, “I feel pretty cheated. I am an American citizen. I’ve paid my taxes. I feel the system kind of let me down. It shouldn’t be that hard.”

How hard is it to get a birth certificate in the mail, get to the local DMV, and get a free identification card? How hard is it to show that card to an election official either the day you vote or some time thereafter? Is it really “that hard”?

Perhaps Ms. Peterson should spend a little time making herself aware of this.

So, less than a week before the midterm elections, four workers from Acorn, the liberal activist group that has registered millions of voters, have been indicted by a federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms to the Kansas City, Missouri, election board. But hey, who needs voter ID laws?

We wish this were an aberration, but allegations of fraud have tainted Acorn voter drives across the country. Acorn workers have been convicted in Wisconsin and Colorado, and investigations are still under way in Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.

How many fradulent registration forms did ACORN submit in Kansas City? Well, we’re not sure, but we do know that ACORN boasted of registering 35,000 people in Kansas City just last month. The election board there hasn’t said exactly, but it did say say that over 15,000 forms had “problems such as duplicates, questionable or unreadable information, or names, addresses and Social Security numbers that don’t match existing records”. There is also this:

The Kansas City Election Board told KMBC they found suspicious forms, such as seven applications from one person and an application for a dead man.

“There is some motive behind it — this is not accidental,” said Ray James with the Kansas City Election Board.

Election officials said some of the application cards had false addresses, signatures and phone numbers.

Voter fraud is an old and established tradition here in America and it likely turned the tide of a Presidential election. Though it’s far from a fraud-free system, requiring identification at the polling place is a simple and effective way of winnowing out the most egregious attempts to disenfranchise us all.

Unfortunately, the Post does not see it that way and is willing to use a “news” story to push its opinion.

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Category: Oh, THAT liberal media., Political Pontifications