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Does Pennsylvania GOP suddenly oppose individual rights? When it comes to voter ID, apparently yes.
The Pennsylvania House is close to approving new voter ID requirements after a strong push by Pa Republicans - doing their part in a nationwide push by the GOP to get states to enact such regulations.
Does Pennsylvania GOP suddenly oppose individual rights? When it comes to voter ID, apparently yes.
The Pennsylvania House is close to approving new voter ID requirements after a strong push by Pa. Republicans — doing their part in a nationwide push by the GOP to get states to enact such regulations.
It's an interesting cause celibre for a party that bills itself as being dedicated to preserving individuals' rights. One of our freedoms as Americans, of course, is the right not to carry state or national identification on our persons — and, indeed, no such standardized identification exists on a national level in the United States. Different states have different requirements, standards, and means for acquiring identification.
You'd think Pennsylvania's Republicans — who oppose regulations preventing fracking and other industries from polluting, who oppose even modest attempts at limiting access to semiautomatic assault weapons, and who so passionate argue against the government telling us what to do — would oppose Big Brother's making them bring some state-issued identification card to exercise their most fundamental of American rights: the vote.
Nope.
Republicans, of course, have made the voter ID issue about election fraud — conflating fake or improperly filled-out voter registrations, of which there are countless in any voter registration drive, with actual voter fraud, of which there is virtually none, anywhere in America.
So as not to tax the minds of our GOP legislators any more than necessary, I'll spell it out.
Registration fraud: When someone uses false, bad, or improper information to fill out a voter registration application.
Voter Fraud: When someone votes twice or when they're not eligible.
Registration fraud is easy to commit, and happens all the time: any time people are paid to collect voter registrations, you're bound to have a few "Mickey G. Mouse" applications in the pile.
But Mickey G. Mouse doesn't exist — and getting him to vote is pretty difficult. Should someone not actually eligible to vote somehow get on the list as themselves, requiring an ID wouldn't make any difference in deterring that vote.
But could someone else pretend to be Mickey and vote twice? Maaaaaybe. But the fake Mickey would have to appear in person, have his real name checked off by a poll worker, leave the voting place, come back, and have his fake name checked, at the same polling place, without getting caught.
That's a lot of work: which might be why the state found four (4) cases of voter fraud in the approximately six million (6,000,000) votes in the 2008 presidential election.
But while voter fraud isn't remotely significant — especially in the statistical sense — what is significant is the number of people who will be deterred from voting by voter ID requirements. Guess who they tend to be? Poor people, old people, and minorities — people the GOP doesn't want to vote.
Voter ID requirements, whatever the noble goals of the GOP, will result in vote suppression, plain and simple. Republicans know this — otherwise they wouldn't waste time violating their own sacred principles of freedom pushing it.
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