If you believe that poor people having greater difficulty acquiring a government ID (which you think they should need to vote) is a "non-issue" then you're either mentally handicapped or, as I suspect, pushing a narrative to disenfranchise people who would be more likely to vote against your own political beliefs.
There are a lot of people in poverty whom hold onto what little money they have that isn't going into necessities to save for emergency expenses that come up from time to time. Or they just don't really have much disposable income at all in some cases. Or they just don't value voting enough to go out and spend money on an ID and would rather spend what little disposable income they have someplace else. All of these are valid enough reasons and you can frankly go **** yourself if you think they shouldn't be allowed to vote for who they want leading the country they live and pay taxes in just because they can't effortlessly drop the money to pay whatever they have to for a government ID, and for some people the costs are well over a hundred dollars and require a lot of travel when they don't necessarily have a vehicle of their own.
A better question is why do you think voter ID laws are so necessary? What scary boogeymen has convinced you of their necessity?
If you need a government ID to vote in elections then the government is in fact regulating who can and can not vote.
So what? Poor white people being kept from voting is also horrible.
But while poor people come in all colors, they are disproportionately ethnic minorities, in this case black or hispanic. Or to put it another way, a far greater percentage of black and hispanic people live in poverty compared to white people (and much less than asian people incidentally).
That is why it is considered racist, because it affects a far larger percentage of black and hispanic people than it does white people. And also because it is obviously a targeted disenfranchisement of them because those demographics tend to largely vote democrat.
Voter ID is effectively a poll tax. Over 20-million eligible voters do not have a government-issued ID. And the cost of the underlying documents to obtain one range for $75 to $175. The travel required is an additional burden. For some rural Americans, the nearest ID office is 170 miles away. Never mind that many ID offices operate only part-time. One office in Georgia, for example, is only open on the fifth Wednesday of the month, which is only four times a year. Most wage earners do not have paid time off, and live paycheck-to-paycheck. They simply cannot afford to take an unpaid day off work, arrange transportation, and spend the entire day traveling and waiting in line at an ID office to spend money they do not have on ID, so they can exercise their constitutional rights.
I completely understand why lefties don't want voter id to be a requirement for voting: it makes it much harder for their side to get away with cheating.
So of course they're going to make up all kinds of excuses for why it shouldn't be mandatory.
And it is no shock that democrats don't think voter fraud is a big deal since it is those on their side who're typically doing the cheating.
__________________ Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth bound feathered dinosaur. But it is not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of 'paleobabble' is going to change that.-- Alan Feduccia-a world authority on birds, quoted in "Archaeopteryx:Early Bird Catches a Can of Worms," Science 1994, p.764-765
People already have to establish their identity in order to register to vote. The system is pretty good at preventing, detecting, and punishing fraud. That is why there is virtually none.
Of course. The only objection to voter ID is that it is unnecessarily burdensome to obtain it. If the government issued them to everyone for free, then no one would care.
People comparing this to a driver's license are stupid or confused. Driving is a privilege, voting is a right. You shouldn't have to pay to be able to vote.
Since voting is a Constitutional right (Voting Rights Act of 1965) of every citizen in the US, yes, the government should cover all cost related to having a voter id, if a voter id is to be mandatory.
Only bigots think what would amount to another poll tax is not both racially and class motivated.
So, the argument is that people shouldn't have to pay in order to exercise their rights?
__________________ posted by Badabing
I don't know why some of you are going on about being right and winning. Rob and Impediment were in on this gag because I PMed them. Silent and Rao PMed me and figured I changed the post. I highly doubt anybody thought Quan made the post, but simply played along just for the lulz.