IDs are Poll Taxes?
Via Bob, a judge has ruled:
Requiring voters “to purchase a photo ID card effectively places a cost on the right to vote,” he said, adding that is the equivalent of a poll tax and is unconstitutional.
I concur with Bob. The solution is to eliminate the fee for the ID cards.
October 20th, 2005 at 10:07 am
Hypothetical Judge: Requiring citizens to purchase a photo ID card effectively places a cost on the right to bear arms. And I just ruined any chance of making the Supreme Court.
October 20th, 2005 at 10:23 am
That’s in Georgia, and Neal Boortz has been covering it quite well. Actually, there was a plan to give out “free” ID cards at no cost to the recipient. How they can claim it’s a poll tax when ID cards are offered at no cost for those without driver’s licenses, is beyond me.
Pretty soon they’ll be saying that making people drive down to the polling station is a poll tax.
October 20th, 2005 at 10:42 am
There is also the issue of convenience.
In that state (GA), the only place to get them is at the stations, none of which are in Atlanta.
I agree that a person should have to uniquely identify themself in order to vote.
But I’m not sure this plan by GA is good enough.
October 20th, 2005 at 12:30 pm
Whats happening in Georgia, as with all things political, is happening by pushing policies that sound reasonable but actually favour one side over the other. Its disgusting and should stop from both sides. The lack of restrictions on absentee voting, while imposing ID requirements on those showing up at the polls is particularly abhorent. Neither side is innocent in all of this.
October 20th, 2005 at 2:33 pm
[…] Say Uncle mentions voter ID cards, which touched off this thought: […]
October 21st, 2005 at 4:54 pm
The real issue here seems to be, as Jon said, that someone has apparently cleverly located the offices that issue ID’s so as to be as inconvenient as is possible for poor urban residents without a running car – and I think we’ll all assume the same thing about what color most people fitting that description are and what party they’re likely to vote for. I’ve even heard that simply declaring that you are too poor to pay the fee gets the fee waived, so it’s really not a poll tax, but you have to get to the office first. (I’m not a Georgian, so I have no idea how accurate either of these often-repeated claims is.)
OTOH, how do all these people without a photo ID buy beer or cigarettes? For that matter, do any of them have jobs? I recently had to go down to HR with ID sufficient to prove citizenship, due to some new federal law if they were telling the truth. I just grabbed the passport out of my desk drawer, but most people would be using the driver’s license plus SS card option, and I’m not sure how anyone without any kind of government-issued photo ID could meet the requirements. If the drivers license/state photo ID office is located or run in a manner designed to discriminate, voting isn’t the biggest worry that people adversely affected should have.