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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mr. Palau who wrote (13269)	10/16/2006 4:15:55 PM
From: Jim S	Respond to of 71588

"The Missouri Supreme Court on Monday struck down a new law requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls, upholding a lower judge's decision." So, it's official. The Missouri Supreme Court supports voter fraud. That's the end of honest elections in Missouri.

To: Mr. Palau who wrote (13269)	10/25/2006 12:02:13 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

The Don't Show Me State The liberal assault on voter ID laws. Tuesday, October 24, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT People in the good state of Missouri need photo identification to cash a check, board a plane or apply for food stamps. But the state Supreme Court has ruled that a photo ID requirement to vote is too great a burden on the elderly and the poor. Go figure. Public polls consistently show that an overwhelming majority of Americans--regardless of age, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status--favor voter ID laws. And nearly half of the nation's states have passed them. Yet a string of recent court decisions has blocked their implementation in some places, thus siding with Democrats and liberal special interest groups who would rather turn a blind eye to voter fraud. A Georgia judge ruled a voter ID law unconstitutional in September. Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked enforcement of a similar law in Arizona, only to be unanimously reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday. (While the Supremes didn't decide on the merits, their willingness to let the ID requirement be enforced in next month's election suggests some encouraging deference to state officials who want to protect the integrity of the ballot.) Also this month, a Seventh Circuit appeals panel heard arguments in a case concerning Indiana's voter ID requirements. And the Michigan Supreme Court will consider a voter ID challenge in November. Missouri's dispute shows what's at stake and why the laws are under attack. The state passed its new voting requirements in May in response to problems at the polls in 2000 and 2004, and the IDs were made available at no charge. The law was to be implemented over a two-year period, and people who lacked proper identification would be permitted to cast a provisional vote next month. Despite these good faith efforts to ensure legitimate ballot access, however, opponents charge that photo ID requirements are overly burdensome and tantamount to a poll tax. The Missouri Democratic Party, which challenged the law, said that while the ID itself is free, the underlying documents--such as a birth certificate--required to obtain the necessary identification cost money. And state judges were sympathetic to the argument. In a 6-1 decision striking down the law as a violation of the state constitution, the Missouri Supreme Court said that requiring the "between 3 and 4 percent of Missourians who lack the requisite photo ID" to obtain one for voting purposes "creates a heavy burden on the fundamental right to vote." How so? "Specific Missouri voters testified that to acquire the requisite photo ID, at the very least they will have to incur the costs associated with birth certificates, which in Missouri costs $15." In his dissenting opinion, Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr. took issue with the fact that the majority opinion actually played down the existence of vote fraud. "Although the majority agrees that there is some evidence of voter fraud at the voter registration stage, they discount that evidence as if it had no connection with fraud at the polling place," wrote Judge Limbaugh. "But why else does voter registration fraud occur if not to vote persons fraudulently registered?" That's a good question. And both the majority ruling and the political left duck it. They'd rather equate a $15 nominal fee for a birth certificate with a poll tax, which is as ridiculous as the paternalistic view that senior and minority voters are incapable of meeting simple self-identification requirements that they manage to meet in other contexts every day. Showing ID is an incidental cost of voting, like having to buy a postage stamp for an absentee ballot, or feed the parking meter when you go to the polling booth. Poll taxes, by contrast, required a person to pay a fee every time he voted and were adopted for racially discriminatory purposes. But there's a reason that Democrat partisans are more interested in raising the specter of Jim Crow than in protecting the integrity of the voting process. And here's a clue: While the Missouri Supreme Court was preparing its decision earlier this month, the Kansas City Star and St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran front-page stories about the thousands of fraudulent voter registrations submitted by Acorn, a national left-wing group financed in part by organized labor. According to the Star, Acorn's voter registration drive generated some 35,000 applications, "but thousands of them appear to be duplicates or contain dubious data." The report went on to note that "[n]ear the top of the fishy list would be a man named Mark who apparently registered seven times over a three-day period using his mother's home address and phone number." Mom told the paper he hadn't lived there in six years. Acorn and its affiliates have been among the most active and vocal opponents of voter ID laws in Missouri and nationwide. Now we know why. opinionjournal.com