Democrats are Losing the "War Against Voter ID"

With one month to go before the 2014 midterm elections, the Democrats are losing the “war against voter ID,” and bad. As explained by John Fund and Hans Von Spakovsky,

[O]ne Rasmussen poll found that 72 percent of the public believes all voters should prove their identities before being allowed to cast ballots, and also that when it comes to voter ID, ‘opinions have not changed much over the years.’

Further, they said,

Polls show that large majorities including Republicans, Democrats, whites, blacks and Hispanics support voter ID as a common sense reform.

That reality is a stark cry from the myth that the Democrats in academia and the mainstream media spread, that voter ID is a new Jim Crow-type effort trying to reduce minority voting.

Fund and Von Spakovsky reiterated why voter ID benefits all Americans, saying

Properly drafted voter ID laws, with safeguards against absentee ballot fraud and strict limits on laws that allow people to register and vote on Election Day, improve public confidence in elections. 

They also addressed the false claim made by Democrats, offering that

Even though in-person voter fraud isn’t rampant, it is easy for fraudsters to commit it without getting caught. New York City’s Department of Investigation last year detailed how its undercover agents claimed at 63 polling places to be individuals who were in fact dead, had moved out of town, or who were in jail. In 61 instances, 97 percent of the time, they were allowed to vote.

[The Board of Elections responded by demanding] that the investigators be prosecuted. Most officials don’t want to admit how vulnerable election systems are, but privately they express worry that close elections could be flipped by fraud.

Addressing the claim made by Democrats that many people lack proper identification, Fund and Von Spakovsky quoted Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who said

One of the most often-cited factoids – something that sounds authoritative but is not fact-based – is the NAACP’s claim that 25 percent of black American adults lack a government-issued photo ID. Think about that for a moment. This would mean that millions of African-American men and women are unable to legally drive, cash a check, board an airliner or participate in everyday activities of modern life.  

Closing out the article, they exemplified Rhode Island Secretary of State Ralph Mollis, who as a Democrat, persuaded Rhode Island’s left-leaning legislature to pass a photo ID bill in 2011. Mollis’ reasoning behind his push for a photo ID law was

When the day is done, my job is to maintain the integrity of elections. Even if a state doesn’t have an immediate problem with fraud, doesn’t it make sense to take sensible precautions rather than wait for someone to abuse the system, and then it’s too late?

Democrats around the country should get the facts straight the same way Ralph Mollis did, and realize that the desire to have voter ID laws is not “racist,” but a fundamental part of protecting the constitutional republic within which we live.