[ Sorry I cannot write a dignified post like Matt at this time… I will be back in a few days with a series of posts on intellectual property. In the meantime, I will fulminate against my favorite target: the Democrats! It’s election season everyone! ]
In what could be the first of many such laws, Indiana’s voter identification law has withstood scrutiny from the Supreme Court of the United States. The Indiana law says that voters must show a government-issued ID at the polling place. It sounds reasonable, but Democrats have strenuously opposed this law because they have relied on voter fraud and dead people voting more than anyone else in the past century. They say there is no *evidence* of voter fraud, and I cede this may be true, but perhaps one could have said the same thing about Florida before 2000. In fact, there are serious irregularities pretty much every election all over the United States.
The Economist says that Democrats allege that this is a poll tax. This is one judgment for which I agree with the Democrats wholeheartedly. It certainly is a poll tax! But the tax is so small so as to be ludicrous — it disenfranchises no one and the law has been implemented well ahead of the next election. If Democrats are truly worried about people’s fundamental rights, they should be destroying government regulations on business and the liberty to contract wherever they may be found, not picking on negligible poll taxes that decrease the ability of the few to manipulate the expression of the will of the many.
How many people don’t have a government issued ID anyway? This is roughly asking how many people don’t drive (legally)? I agree, if you define “poll tax” as a sort of cost to vote, then yes, this legislation increases the cost of voting, but seriously, as Admiral said, the cost is so low.
And let me throw out that typical non-sequiter that seems appropriate: If you can’t spend the very low cost of getting an ID, and acknowledging the importance of increasing voting data precision, should you really be voting?