Voter ID: Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't

The editorial Shakedown for silly voter ID law argues against the Texas voter ID mandate, as the title may suggest. The argument centers around the notion of discrimination and the lack of evidence of voter fraud. The discrimination argument focuses on “unfair hardship on poor people and hourly workers, some of whom face a 250-mile round trip to reach a driver’s license office.” The fraud focuses on claims of “rampant election-day voter impersonation.”


The writer neglects to reflect on how much time has passed since the voter ID law was enacted in 2011. Texas is going out of its way now to deploy mobile stations and extending driver’s license offices to include Saturdays in order for people to acquire the proper ID. Some may say this is too late for the constitutional amendment vote. How about arguing that it's early for the next congressional election a year from now? Unless Texas officials were physically stopping people from acquiring proper identification, I don't see how people that do vote couldn't comply with the law. People have had two years. Being a new resident of the Lone Star State, I was able to get my state drivers license literally as soon as I pursued getting it. Instead of the writer whining about the mandate, I would like to hear from them what actions people have taken to help others comply with the two year old law. Surely the droves of ID-less individuals are being helped by political campaigns or grass root volunteers. Some fund raising must have occurred to pay for buses to commute them to the nearest driver's license office or the like. Or is it possible that the writer is just blowing the issue out of proportion?


What makes the article worse is the tone the writer choses to use to demean and ridicule the voter ID law and the Texas legislature, instead of offering a logical argument against the law. Calling the voter ID law “the nastiest, most politically divisive debates in years” gives no merit to an argument. Regardless of how the law came to be, it is still the law. If people don't want to comply with it, they understand the consequences. Also, claiming that county-issued voter registration cards are “tried-and-true” does not make it so. Voter fraud is hard to detect, let alone prove. Unfortunately, the writer diminishes the value of their argument with all the unnecessary adjectives that distract rather than inform.

Shakedown for silly voter ID law article was published on the Dallas Morning News site on September 25, 2013.