Reply to Why does the Obama administration object to voter id laws?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]http://webfarm.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-12/texas-voter-identification-law-is-blocked-by-justice-department-as-biased.html

What is discriminatory about having to prove who you are? I can't drive without ID, or board a plane. [/quote]

For a number of reasons:

1) If you are poor and black, you're less likely to drive or fly to begin with. You may not have ID.
2) If you are poor and black, and take time out to vote but forget your ID, you may not have time to go back to the polling station again.
3) The U.S. Constitution doesn't require you to present ID to exercise your right to vote. Square that with the 15th Amendment, please.[/quote]

It's not "poor and black", it's just "poor".  The poor are less likely to have state issued ID.  Many of them don't drive and have no reason to pay money (especially money they cannot afford) to get a driver's license when they don't drive.  And a photo ID from the MVA still costs money.  There are more people below the poverty line that lean Democratic than lean Republican so Democrats tend to try to fight such legislation.  As for your point #2, just to clarify, many of the poor take public transit to get to voting stations and it isn't just a quick trip in the car back home to get the ID and back.   And many of them have very little flexibility in when they can vote because of when they work.  They have a small window in which they can get to the polling stations when they're open.

In answer, it's not discriminatory to have to prove who you are.  It is discriminatory to require any citizen to have to pay a fee of any sort (even a driver's license registration fee) in order to exercise their Constitutional right to vote.  Those people who cannot see this problem clearly have never looked at the issues that affect the roughly 15% of the US citizen population that fall below the poverty line.  If you have a state issued ID that is free, then a lot of the objections to these types of laws will go away.  Until then, it *IS* discriminatory.[/quote]

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