Friday, August 03, 2012

Another reason our economy is in the tank

According to this column by Juan Williams, about 10% of Pennsylvania's registered voters do not have a state issued photo ID.  Moreover, about ten million American voters do not have a state issued photo ID,  do not live within ten miles of the nearest DMV office, and do not have access to adequate public transportation to get there.  Now, Williams, a Democrat, is unhappy that this will likely prevent Democrats from voting.  So let's take him at his word.

Let's start by noting that Pennsylvania, like most states, does issue state photo IDs to those who do not want a drivers' license.  So this is not an issue of senior citizens ending their driving careers and thus losing the franchise because there is no photo ID available for them.  One can also, of course, get a U.S. passport and also be eligible to vote.

Rather, we must assume that up to one in five likely Democratic voters do not have the necessary identification to get a job, take out a loan, travel domestically or internationally, get an account at the bank, buy a home, or drive.  I would have to guess that if the Democrats stopped worrying about voter ID laws and started worrying about why so many of their voters are unable to participate in modern society, they might do an awful lot for the economy as all these people finally had a chance to get their first decent job and their first decent home.

So much for the Democrats caring about the poor!

1 comment:

pentamom said...

They can drive people to the polls at party expense, but they can't arrange transportation to the DMV for IDs, for the small percentage of people who have no other access to transportation to get them there?

Once that's done, what you're left with is a tiny, tiny percentage of people who lack access to either birth records or citizenship papers. A truly caring politician would be first and foremost concerned with seeing to it that their underlying problem was solved: lack of access to not only voting, but all those other things you mention. Insisting that the voting process remain insecure will not enable them to perform all those other functions of modern life; helping them to GET ID's instead of complaining about the NECESSITY of getting them, would be much more productive.