Photo ID A Must To Prevent Voter Fraud

In 2008 liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens authored an opinion upholding Indiana’s voter photo ID requirement. It’s important to note that the 6-3 Court decision was authored by what was at the time the most liberal Justice. That hasn’t stopped Attorney General Eric Holder from trying to stop photo ID requirements in Texas and South Carolina. Apparently Supreme Court decisions don’t matter to the administration, which would be keeping in line with Obama’s Supreme Court rant last week. The fact is, it is necessary and prudent to require photo ID of voters.

James O’Keefe has produced dozens of videos of people intentionally asking for ballots for dead people, famous people and people who are otherwise not the person requesting the ballot. In his latest stunt, he sent a white kid to ask for a ballot for Eric Holder in Washington DC’s recent election. The DOJ shot back that the evidence was manufactured. Well of course it’s manufactured, the point of it is to show how easy it is to commit voter fraud. Whether it is happening on a grand scale or not cannot be known because many states don’t require photo ID and when they do the Justice Department ignores the Supreme Court and tries to invalidate the law.

We require photo ID’s to board airplanes, we require them to cash checks, we require them to drive a car, we require them to enter and exit the country, you even need a photo ID to rent a video. In fact, Obamacare requires photo ID to obtain medical services. Yet the left doesn’t want to require photo ID’s to vote. They cry racism, yet majorities of blacks and Hispanics consistently support photo ID requirements. Pew has shown that there are around 1.8 million dead people still registered to vote. We know that in any given major election half of registered voters don’t vote. Is it that far of a stretch to suggest that without ID requirements it’s easy to vote illegally and likely this happens?

I’ve heard any number of objections, all of which are unfounded. The first claim is that the poor won’t be able to obtain a  photo ID. Yet in every state that has such a requirement offers free photo ID’s for those who do not have a drivers license. Keep in mind, most adult Americans have a drivers license. In fact, because a photo ID is required for so many things the overwhelming majority of adults have a government issued photo ID already. We’re talking 98% or more.

The next objection seems to be that those who are poor and who do not already have a photo ID may have to produce a birth certificate in order to obtain an ID. I will refrain from wondering whether Obama ever produced such a birth certificate to obtain a photo ID in his youth. The fact though is that it’s relatively easy to obtain a birth certificate and there’s no reason why state’s cannot make this free in order for citizens to obtain photo ID’s to vote. For anyone under the age of 70, the likelihood that a birth certificate has been lost to time is highly unlikely and even if it does happen for generations there have been other ways of proving birth. That ought to be sufficient.

The fact though is that we’ve never been given a single example by the left of someone unable to obtain a photo ID. We hear law school style what if’s but we never actually see any people. Meanwhile, any of us can walk up to a polling place in a state that doesn’t have an ID requirement and request a ballot using any name on the list. It begs the question why the left so strongly opposes ID requirements. Perhaps the left wants to protect its monopoly on voter fraud.