Well, I so appreciate the US Supreme court upholding Indiana's voter ID law. I mean, my word, we've had blatant disregard for our laws with out of control illegal voting in our state for decades.
In my whole life I have only ever heard of one case of voter fraud in the Culver area-and they were prosecuted. Seems like a good reason to require great aunt betty to remember to bring her ID with her when cousin max takes her to the polls.
I don't particularly have a problem with the law....but it had clear undertones of partisan politics. Had the Hoosier state been suffering from high cases of fraud, I could understand this-but it certainly would seem on the surface to be a republican strategy to complicate legal voting for some folks who just want to exercise their sacred right.
It might be more interesting to follow Florida's lead on having "crazy boxes" on their ballots. You have to check a box at the end of the ballot certifying you're not certifiable. I like this. Actually, I would like to see the stats from who the crazy people vote for vs. the sane. We have one local candidate, a D, who files for one office or another every year. I think he would get a high percentage of crazy votes. He might not be able to check the box himself.
Maybe this wouldn't be such a great idea.......I'd hate to find out how many people really are crazy in our state.......we may end up losing half our voters by this disqualifying action.
5 comments:
There are a lot of elderly people who have no photo ID. They no longer drive and have not gone to the license branch to purchase a photo ID! First they would have to produce a birth crtificate...which costs $5.00 and then the photo ID which is lets say $10 so $15.00 maybe to cast a vote....the poll tax was 1.50 40 years ago. The real underlining motive was based in bigotry, fear that too many blacks and "illegal" hispanics may be voting.....Hells bells less than 40% of registered voters even exercise the right anyway why are we making it even more difficult. Indiana is all about maintaining its waspy labor hating ways.
It is not about maintaining a waspy image or about labor hating. It is about respect for the law. Citizens and non-citizens are responsible for observing our laws. Just as ignorance of a law is not a defense of breaking the law, neither is inconvenience of following the law an excuse to break it. I will agree that it is sad that so few people perform one of their most sacred and important duties each year.
I respectfully disagree.....In Indiana we start voting at 6am just one hour before most blue collar workers must report. We close the polls at 6pm...while most other states vote as late at 7pm and some 8pm. Now we throw in the photo ID requirement and we are headed down the poll tax slope! I wonder if you are old enough to remember the "stay inside the box rule" when marking a paper ballot in Indiana....I am sorry but you are "in the dark" about Indiana's wicked past and present!
You may disagree...that is everyone's right. I would not say that I am "in the dark" about Indiana's past. I am almost a decade removed from voting in the Hoosier state, so I am not well versed on the current political climate. So, the inconvenience of starting your day a bit earlier that one time in order to vote or stopping by the polls after work are in some way a nefarious plot of the government to stifle participation in elections? While I do believe government officials don't always have the common good in mind when they conduct their business, I am not buying into a vast conspiracy of voter suppression either. Why is okay for someone to show up at a polling place and say they are someone without providing photo id to prove their identity. Lax measures at the polls are how dead people get to vote in election after election
In the last couple of years, the legislature here passed mail in ballot voting. The purpose was to make it more convenient for people to vote. Add in the state is also a motor voter registration state and anyone who gets a driver's license regardless of citizenship is now a voter....well, that is a topic for another time. Back to the ultra convenient method of voting...I, personally, have missed voting in more elections since the mail in balloting was instituted than when I drove to the polls to vote. It has become too convenient...so convenient that I have forgotten to drop the ballot in the mail more than one time.
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