Quote of the Week

"One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils."
- Woodrow Wilson



Friday, October 10, 2014

Voter ID Laws. No argument, but the arguing continues....

Now that it's getting closer to election time, the neverending debate of Voter ID laws are a topic of choice again. To me this is down right embarrassing that this debate continues.

Those who are adamantly opposed to such laws scream it hinders the poor and elderly from being able to vote. They say many people have no photo ID and this makes things too tough for them. And the closer is usually something along the lines of "voter fraud is so small, it really doesn't matter."

I tend to point out that their arguments have no merits at all. You need an ID to get a job, a loan, a checking or savings account, buy ammo, tobacco or alcohol (when your age is in question), to even get a library card.

State ID's are free, so it by no means an inconvenience to the poor. Who by the way if are really poor, need an ID to get food stamps. The only inconvenience is someone has to take a few hours of time to get an ID. Since the normal election cycle is 2 years, the average person has about 730 days to get this taken care of.

That means the elderly shut in or poor person who has no car has 730 days to arrange a ride and or time off of work to go the DMV for their free state issued ID. As I often said, people today put more thought and effort into voting for the next American Idol or who the draft for their fantasy football team than who they send to the state & federal capitals to represent them.

Usually after I state my case like I just did above, the usually rebuttal is something along the lines of "if everyone needs an ID, those who are dishonest know how to get them. So it doesn't really make any difference."

Those who are going to break the laws are going to break them anyway, so why bother? Is that the final line of defense for those who don't want Voter ID laws?

Interesting reason to oppose something. Since there is apparently nothing we can do to stop the rulebreakers, maybe we just shouldn't have rules to begin with? Would make things simple and save us a ton of money. No need for government to make new laws, police to enforce them, judges & courts to make sure they are being enforced properly, or jails to imprison the convicted. Sounds pretty silly doesn't it? Just about as bad as the arguments against Voter ID laws.

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