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Voter ID Foolishness


by: Blue_in_Guadalupe

Mon Mar 09, 2009 at 10:24 PM CDT


(I was going to write something to this effect, but this post does it just about right. - promoted by Phillip Martin)

Some members of the Texas Senate seem stuck on the notion that Voter ID will somehow magically solve a voter impersonation problem that no one has shown actually exists. Not only is this a waste of time since there isn't an actual documented problem its patently ridiculous to expect temporary poll workers to be able to identify a real versus forged drivers license as anyone on the enforcement staff of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) will tell you. Even full-time enforcement agents can't always tell when a driver's license is a forgery.

The folks at the TABC routinely run classes for liquor store and bar employees where they hand out a dozen or so confiscated driver's licenses and ask the attendees to identify which are forgeries. Not only do most of the attendees get it wrong, the instructors readily admit that they often can't tell just be looking at them either. If college kids can produce or acquire high quality forgeries that easily don't you think a determined fraudulent voter would do the same.

The Texas Senate has more important business to attend to than fixing a non-existent problem by creating hurdles for low-income and elderly voters with a process that even trained professionals can't guarantee they can execute consistently.

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I feel bad for our poll workers (0.00 / 0)
They are already asked to do so much for so little reward.  The pay is really pathetic first off.  Texas should really be investing more money to pay our election workers more so we can recruit more workers. Then give the counties more money for better training.

These good citizens who step up are underpaid, over worked and maybe even under trained for their responsibilities now.  Now they will need to be trained more hours to recognize a valid photo ID under this bill.

Who is going to want to be a poll worker if this bill passes?


More on Voter ID Foolishness (5.00 / 1)
First, I don't for a moment concede that there is any evidence that we need voter ID legislation like SB 362, but for the sake of argument let's assume that we do.

Ask any college kid today about getting a fake ID to get into a bar or go to the liquor store and they'll tell you it's not hard to find one. They'll probably tell you it's a cottage industry on campus. Talk to the enforcement staff of TABC and ask them about fake photo ID's. They'll tell you two things, one is they're quite prevalent and the other is they're good enough that it's often hard to tell them apart from the real thing even for them, let alone a poll worker with very little training and even less experience.

We've all heard the news that identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the country, the credit card companies even do commercials about it. These folks routinely gin up fake photo ID's and supporting documents.

What's even easier though given the proposed legislation's options for other non-photo forms of identification is forging utility bills and such. I can whip those out on a home computer and a $70 color printer so fast it'll make your head spin. The whole notion that this legislation will prevent voter fraud is a farce of the first order.

The only people this legislation will stop from voting are folks that simply don't have legitimate documentation because they don't drive and don't get the necessary bills in their name or don't keep them around when they do. Therefore the real affect of this bill is voter suppression.

As long as corporations are people and money is speech, then democracy is a farce.


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