Democrats losing long war against voter ID | WashingtonExaminer.com

Democrats losing long war against voter ID | WashingtonExaminer.com

You would not know it if you read only the New York Times or watched only MSNBC, but the Left and President Obama are losing their fight to block the widespread introduction of voter ID cards. In courts of law and the court of public opinion, the issue is gaining traction. With few exceptions, liberal pressure groups have lost lawsuits in state after state, with courts tossing out their faux claims that ID laws are discriminatory, unconstitutional or suppress minority voting.

Polls show that a large majorities including Republicans, Democrats, whites, blacks and Hispanics support voter ID as a common-sense reform. The myth that voter ID is a new Jim Crow-type effort to reduce minority voting is widely rejected for the rubbish that it is — except by academia and the glitterati of the mainstream media. One 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.”

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. 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. (To avoid skewing results, they voted only for nonexistent write-in candidates.) How did the city’s Board of Elections respond? Did it immediately probe and reform them sloppy procedures? Not at all. It instead demanded 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.

Take Al Franken’s 2008 victory over incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman. A watchdog group matched criminal records with the voting rolls and discovered that 1,099 felons had cast ballots illegally. A local TV news reporter found that nine of the 10 felons he interviewed had voted for Franken. State law allows prosecutions only of those who admit knowingly committing voter fraud, and 177 were convicted. Franken’s victory margin was just 312 votes. It gave Democrats their 60th Senate seat, creating the filibuster-proof majority that helped make Obamacare law.

Many good people are mistakenly convinced that voter ID laws and other measures to buttress the integrity of elections are discriminatory. Many also say fraud isn’t a serious issue. Rather than fighting such laws, however, they should be working to ensure that everyone can easily obtain an ID.

There is sharp disagreement over how many people lack proper identification. Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who is himself black, pointed out in the Wall Street Journal that “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.” Hyperbole of this sort perpetuates the patronizing view that minorities are helpless victims. Liberals say Blackwell doesn’t understand how high the barriers are for some people who lack ID. But if he were really wrong, it is difficult to see why so few voters apply for a free ID in states with such requirements.