Maybe worried about illegal votes for dems? How will acorn and obama ever operate is this is made law?
South Carolina Democrats walk out to protest ID bill
Robert Kittle, News 2 Statehouse Bureau
Published: February 27, 2009
counton2.com
Debate is normal at the South Carolina Statehouse. Heated debate is occasional.
But on Thursday, members of the Legislative Black Caucus and some other Democrats were so upset they walked out of the House chamber in protest. They had fought for hours against a bill that would require all voters to show a state-issued photo ID to be able to vote.
When it became clear the bill would pass despite their attempts to stop it, Rep. David Weeks, D-Sumter, took the floor, complaining that opponents had basically been told by the Republican leadership that, “It’s my way or the highway.“ As he spoke, more and more Democrats joined him at the front of the chamber.
“The highway will lead to the courthouse and we shall be there, we will meet you there, we will see you there and we will stand against any measure that’s going to try to repress and depress the participation of citizens of this community in their right, their constitutional right to be able to freely participate in the electoral process,“ he bellowed. After that, he and those who had joined him at the front walked out of the House chamber in protest. The bill then passed 65-14.
Rep. Joe Neal, D-Hopkins, was part of the group that walked out. “We’ve had no incidents in this state of that kind of voter fraud, where someone has gone in and impersonated someone else for purposes of voting,“ he says. “What this measure is intended to do is to make it difficult for rural, poor and elderly people to vote. Because this is a population that tends not to have a state-issued ID.“
He says a perfect example is his aunt, who’s 104 years old. Because of her age, she doesn’t have a driver’s license. Getting a state-issued photo ID from the DMV would be difficult because she would have to get a ride and wait in line. She would then be told she needed her birth certificate. She doesn’t have one because birth records back then were just kept in family Bibles, Neal says.
But Rep. Ted Pitts, R-Lexington, who voted for the bill, doesn’t agree with the claims that getting a state-issued photo ID would be a great hardship on anyone. “Making a trip to the DMV is not any more of a hardship than making a trip to the polls,“ he says. “I just think that the integrity of voting and being required to show a picture ID is not too big of a request to be made.“
To make it even easier, he says, the bill requires the DMV to waive its current $5 fee for a state-issued photo ID. The bill also does nothing to change absentee voting, he says, so an elderly voter who can’t get to the DMV can still vote at home without needing a photo ID.
The Legislative Black Caucus and the state chapter of the NAACP promise a legal challenge if the bill becomes law. Indiana has a similar law that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld. But Rep. Neal points out that, because of its history of voter suppression, South Carolina has to get approval from the U.S. Department of Justice to make any changes to its voting processes. |
