Got ID?

The Obama administration’s Attorney General Eric Holder and his Civil Rights Division Chief, Thomas E. Perez, blocked the implementation of a Texas law requiring voters to produce identification in order to vote at a polling place. According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Justice Department wrote a letter to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot, claiming that “Hispanic voters in Texas are more than twice as likely than non-Hispanic voters to lack a driver’s license or personal state-issued photo ID. The department said that even the lowest estimates showed about half of Hispanic registered voters lack such identification.” How does the Department of Justice measure such things? Did it randomly stop Texas Hispanics asking them for photo IDs? Oh, wait! That would be discriminatory, as evidence by Holder suing Arizona for passing legislation to do just that. So absent that, how did the DOJ come to that conclusion? Do half of all Texas Hispanics over 18-years old not have driver licenses? Can they not afford the fee to purchase a Texas issued photo identification card? I hardly think so. American society is so accustomed to showing identification that it’s astonishing anyone other than someone who has ill intent would object to proving their identity for something so important, like voting. Without blinking, Americans produce their driver license or other government issued identification to enter a federal or state building or military installation, join the service, cash a check, write a check, establish a bank account, sometimes to use their credit cards, vote on union issues, sign a notarized document, board a commercial airliner, register for school, take out a loan, adopt a pet, rent a car, rent a hotel room, apply for a job, buy cigarettes, initiate cell phone service, buy alcohol and hopefully to apply for welfare. So why not to vote? What’s so discriminating about asking someone to prove who they are to cast a ballot? If producing photo identification to vote is discriminatory, then why do we have to show identification for anything? It’s impossible for me to believe that someone who is in the U.S. legally does not have access to some form of government identification. For a small fee, a state DMV will issue any legal resident an identification card. There’s the rub. Texas requires applicants for identification cards to provide a social security number, which only legal residents are entitled. Is this why Holder and Perez estimate that half of all Hispanics in Texas cannot get a state issued photo ID card? California actually verifies the number with the Social Security Administration before issuing an ID card. The truth of the matter is that requiring voter photo ID would virtually eliminate voter fraud. It would prevent dead people, “Mickey Mouse,” “Donald Duck,” felons, and illegal aliens from voting for their favorite candidates, and Holder knows it. He and his Chicago cronies are mining for voters wherever they can find them. The Obama administration sees a crop of voters to harvest this November, and it doesn’t want pesky state voter photo ID laws getting in the way. Many millions of American servicemen and woman have sacrificed greatly to maintain the cherished right to vote. For the Obama administration to discount that and allow even a remote possibility of someone not entitled to vote to do so, is an affront to those who fought and died to retain that right as free citizens. Thirty-four states have introduced legislation to require voters to identify themselves at polling places. A federal law should require all voters to prove their identities before casting a ballot. That law would prevent anyone, any ACORN type of organization or any administration from skewing the results of an election. If Texas offered to issue free State photo ID cards to any legal Texas resident who wanted one, Eric Holder would still complain because his political party’s illegal voting base would erode. He’d probably object on the grounds Hispanics can’t afford bus fare to the polls, or can’t read English, or some other such nonsense.