A Campaign Against Logic – The Opposition to Voter ID Laws
American progressives and liberals seem to have the same philosophy regarding elections that some attribute to SEC football coaches regarding conference games: if ya ain’t cheatin’, then ya ain’t tryin’.
Consider the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a group linked with president Obama. Their rap sheet is long ; by 2009, the organization already had at least a decade-long record of voter fraud arrests and convictions in 17 states: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington state, and Wisconsin.
It doesn’t stop there with ACORN. In 2010, Maria Miles and Kevin Clancy were 2 ACORN workers among 5 people charged with felony voter fraud in Wisconsin. Clancy got 10 months in prison, concurrent with an armed robbery sentence he was serving (you can’t make this stuff up!). Miles got a 1-year jail term, deferred in lieu of 90 days in jail and two years probation. The organization itself pleaded guilty to felony voter fraud in Nevada in 2011 . Suffice to say that ACORN raised voter registration fraud to an art form.
But there is more. Comedian and Democrat Al Franken won the 2008 Minnesota US Senate race by 312 votes, after eight months of legal wrangling and recounts. One thousand ninety-nine convicted felons, who cannot legally vote in Minnesota, and who tend to vote Democrat when allowed near a polling place, did cast ballots.
It would be nice to say there is voter fraud on both sides, Democrat and Republican. However, it is difficult, at best, to find much on the Republican side; an accusation against an Arizona county supervisor candidate and a conviction of an Indiana Secretary of State is out there. Still the Democrats, even without the voter fraud machine known as ACORN, are the more consistent, aggressive, and determined perpetrators of voter fraud. News reports and court records over the past few years seem to confirm the fact. Yet, despite the arrests and convictions, and at least one US Senate race where Democrat voter fraud affected the outcome, the Democrat Party maintains that voter fraud is not a problem.
What seems to get lost in the noise of debate is the fact that voter fraud is much more effective at disenfranchising voters than any Voter ID law could ever hope to be. Voter ID laws put a surmountable barrier, at worst, before would-be voters – the same barrier anyone opening a checking account must overcome – to obtain a photo ID to verify their identity. Those who believe they are disenfranchised can either comply with the law and get an ID or sue to demonstrate that the law treats them unfairly. Both of these can be accomplished long before Election Day.
But what remedy is available to the victims of voter fraud? The 1,099 felons who voted illegally in the 2008 US Senate race in Minnesota effectively disenfranchised 1,099 legal voters. Given the final margin of victory (312 votes), it is likely that the junior Senator from Minnesota was not the voters’ choice; the will of the people did not prevail. Would another vote, or a recall election, correct the situation? Of course not! Every vote that is cast by the man who should not represent the people will still register in the Senate until he would be replaced. And each vote from that Senator is a new injury to the people who cast legal ballots.
Further, what good would a recall do, unless the fraudulent voters are first purged from the rolls and prevented from casting another ballot?
Eric Holder would have all believe Voter ID laws are the equivalent of poll taxes:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIonL3e_0AQ[/youtube]
When speaking to the NAACP, Holder relayed the Democrat talking point that Texas would accept a concealed weapon carry permit as an acceptable photo ID for voter identification but would not accept a student photo ID for the same purpose. This was meant to show the unreasonable nature of voter ID laws. However, the gun permit involves coming out clean after a National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) check; they KNOW you are who you say you are. Let’s just say the requirements for getting a student photo ID are significantly less stringent.
But that is the current tactic of the political left: present an unequal act as the moral equivalent to a reasonable act so that they might call what most would consider reasonable as either absurd or unfair.
Kind of like the college football coach who would have you believe that, when another school’s senior player takes a recruit to a movie, it’s the moral equivalent of his Booster Club buying the kid a car. Then, that same coach would tell you that since, both schools did something “questionable”, that both acts should be viewed in the same light.
Of course, it is not only a false argument, but one that defies logic, just like the Democrat argument that a student photo ID is no different from a concealed weapon permit.
As I wrote earlier: if ya ain’t cheatin’, then ya ain’t tryin’.
Copyright 2012. blackmanthinkin.com