Voter ID. What makes this common sense requirement so controversial?
I’ve written a number of pieces on this subject over the past few years, but a copy of an article of unknown origin, Ever wonder why Republicans want voter ID?, sent to me by a reader spurred me to again address the subject.
The article cites voting irregularities in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio that any reasonable person should question. Is it possible that not one person in Wood County, Ohio’s 21 districts voted for Mitt Romney? And, how is that 106, 258 votes were cast in that county where there were only 98,213 eligible voters? There were other examples cited as well.
While the Republicans want to attack the fraud in voting, Democrats call it voter suppression.
Democrats argue that voter ID is racist. I have argued that it is the Democrat Party that appears racist to me. Democrats paint African-Americans, by virtue of their skin color, as persons unable to obtain, hold and present a photo ID. Red State’s Martin Knight, a black man, once wrote, “I make it a point to ask any liberal squealing about voter ID to kindly explain why a black man like me, as opposed to a white or Asian man, is somehow intrinsically less capable of taking a valid photo ID to the polls on election day.” To which, they hem and haw and have no answer.
While living in Texas, I scolded a Democrat women’s club in print for its stance that voter ID was being unfair to Hispanics as a group unable to grasp what it took to obtain a voter ID. It is an insult to their intelligence.
The Obama administration is helping the Democrat Party’s position through its Justice and Treasury Departments. Attorney General Eric Holder has sued a number of states over their voter ID laws, and the IRS stopped the Houston organization, True the Vote, as part of its attack on conservative groups seeking tax exempt status.
Catherine Englebrecht and her organization True the Vote became the target of the IRS after the 2010 elections. (Worldmag.com photo)
Dissatisfied with the Harris County voting process during the 2008 election, members of the King Street Patriots founded True the Vote, to train volunteers to be election monitors, and to spot suspicious voter registration.
In the 2010 election, True the Vote discovered a number of instances of election fraud and caused the Texas Democrat Party to accuse the organization of voter intimidation, largely in African-American and Hispanic polling areas. True the Vote president Catherine Engelbrecht became the target of visits by the IRS, FBI, ATF and even OSHA in an effort by the government to intimidate her.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton heard True the Vote’s motion seeking to speed up discovery in its lawsuit over the targeting of grassroots conservative groups. Stay tuned.
