It’s irrelevant and a ridiculous non-issue.
You might then ask, “Why does anyone care? Why is anyone debating this issue? Why have 37 states, including Mississippi, either enacted or started to consider legislation to create voter ID laws?”
Well, let’s follow it logically through the pipeline.
In order for a bill to become a law, some kind of problem must be found. Like I said, it’s not a problem. In fact, News21, an investigative journalism program based out of Arizona State University, did an extensive analysis of 2,068 alleged cases of election fraud. In their analysis, they found 10 cases of voter impersonation. We have about 146 million registered voters in the United States. If you do a little math, you’ll discover that equals about one case of voter impersonation for every 15 million registered voters. Do you still care about this “issue?”
Well, someone does. It takes very little googling to find out who — Republican lawmakers. The question that remains unanswered is why? Why would Republicans want to create a solution for something that isn’t a problem? It’s like they’re throwing a pinch of salt over their shoulder after they spilled the shaker; they’re scared of a superstition.
One video that caught a lot of attention and was quite edifying was the House Republican leader of my home state of Pennsylvania, Mike Turzai, who said the voter ID law was “going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”
Hey! Wait a second…This isn’t about voter fraud at all. This means that the intentions behind voter ID laws aren’t fueled by a superstition or some pure naïve worry for our country’s safety but are instead steeped in manipulative political motivations. Let’s be honest, the only way these laws would have allowed Romney to win would be if they disallowed voters who supported President Obama, AKA Obama’s 47 percent.
In swing states these laws could actually affect elections.
There are 21 million eligible voters who do not have a government-issued ID. If these kinds of laws continue to be passed, we are going to disenfranchise a sizable portion of the U.S. citizenry, and, by the way, that 21 million is unsurprisingly made up of low-income minorities.
Hmmm…Sounds suspiciously like the poll taxes of yore.
This is not what elections are about, and this should not be the goal.
We need to continue to support eligible voters to come out and vote. As I’ve said in a previous column, our voter turnout is embarrassing. Why are we trying to eliminate eligible voters? We need to change our focus from these non-issues and focus on those problems that actually affect us as a people. Mississippians, I promise you that voter fraud is not something we need to be concerned about.
I commend you for voting, but let’s not let our politicians stop eligible voters from doing the same. Let’s not allow our representatives to tell us that what divides us is what is best for us.
Phil McCausland is an English senior from Carlisle, Pa. Follow him on Twitter @phillmccausland.
