GUN POLITICS - What if politicians began enacting and enforcing a spate of laws across the country that prevented millions of law-abiding citizens from buying guns in order to stop criminals from getting their hands on weapons? Would Second Amendment advocates remain silent?
That’s what is happening in America in 2012 — except, instead of keeping millions of Americans from exercising their right to bear arms, Republican legislators, governors and secretaries of state are trying to stop millions of Americans from exercising their right to vote. Yet those who would never tolerate any curtailment of gun rights have raised nary a peep about this assault on voting rights.
Under the excuse of preventing “voter fraud,” Republican state officials are vigorously pushing voter ID laws that will make it harder — and in some cases, virtually impossible — for certain citizens to vote. These laws — which require voters to show a state-issued photo ID that many Americans don’t have and will have great difficulty obtaining — could bar 3.2 million eligible and legally registered voters from voting in the next election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan think tank.
Since 2000, there have been only about 10 cases in the United States of people impersonating someone else at the polls, the only type of fraud that voter ID laws could conceivably prevent, according to a study by News21. This small number is not surprising. Impacting an election through voter impersonation would require a scheme of comically byzantine proportions, including “an army of individual impersonators,” notes Barbara Arnwine, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. That’s why it’s more likely, according to the Brennan Center, for a person to be struck by lightning than to pretend to be someone else at the polls. (Read more)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 85
Pub: Oct 23, 2012