By Allan Wall
05/16/2008
The nickname of the great state of Missouri is the "Show Me State", the connotation being "a certain self-deprecating stubbornness and devotion to simple common sense".
These are good qualities in the fight against today’s illegal invasion and the voter fraud that accompanies it.
The New York Times ran an interesting article entitled Voter ID Battle Shifts to Proof of Citizenship [by Ian Urbina, May 12th, 2008] about the current attempt in the Show Me State to actually make people show they are citizens in order to register to vote!
In a sane country, this would not even be an issue, but given today’s environment, it’s a contentious one.
The Federal government doesn’t seem to be too concerned about illegal voting:
From October 2002 to September 2005, the Justice Department indicted 40 voters for registration fraud or illegal voting, 21 of whom were noncitizens, according to department records.
That’s all? What a joke!
But the states are taking up the slack. In the state of Missouri (where I resided for several years) there’s a proposed constitutional amendment “to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.” That sounds eminently reasonable to me, and should be to anyone without some kind of subversive agenda.
The Times explains that:
The measure would allow far more rigorous demands than the voter ID requirement recently upheld by the Supreme Court, in which voters had to prove their identity with a government-issued card. Sponsors of the amendment — which requires the approval of voters to go into effect, possibly in an August referendum — say it is part of an effort to prevent illegal immigrants from affecting the political process.
The article reports that other states are mulling similar measures, but the Missouri proposal could possibly be enacted before this year’s election.
Currently, you only have to prove you are a citizen to register in one state!
In Arizona, the only state that requires proof of citizenship to register to vote, more than 38,000 voter registration applications have been thrown out since the state adopted its measure in 2004. That number was included in election data obtained through a lawsuit filed by voting rights advocates and provided to The New York Times. More than 70 percent of those registrations came from people who stated under oath that they were born in the United States, the data showed.
What ? You mean non-citizens breaking the law actually lied about it? Horrors!
As for actually proving identity when voting, half of the states require that:
Already, 25 states, including Missouri, require some form of identification at the polls. Seven of those states require or can request photo ID. More states may soon decide to require photo ID now that the Supreme Court has upheld the practice. Democrats have already criticized these requirements as implicitly intended to keep lower-income voters from the polls, and are likely to fight even more fiercely now that the requirements are expanding to include immigration status.
As I reported in a VDARE.COM article several years ago, here in Mexico they have a free government-issued voter ID card. When the voter shows up at the polls, his ID card photo is checked against that of a book that contains the photo of every voter in the precinct.
Meanwhile, back in Missouri:
The Missouri secretary of state, Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who opposes the measure, estimated that it could disenfranchise up to 240,000 registered voters who would be unable to prove their citizenship.
Well, if they really are citizens, there ought to be a way to prove it.
And here’s somebody who doesn’t think it’s a hardship:
Thor Hearne, a lawyer from Missouri who has been a strong advocate for voter ID laws, cited a California congressional race in 1996 in which a Republican, Bob Dornan, was narrowly defeated. Mr. Dornan contested the results, claiming that illegal immigrants had voted.After a 14-month investigation by state, county and federal officials, a panel concluded that up to 624 noncitizens may have registered to vote. The report came to no firm determination of whether any of those people had actually voted.
Mr. Hearne said the requirement would not pose a significant hardship on voters.
”There were a lot of the same alarmist charges regarding Indiana voter ID law and how it would disenfranchise so many people,” Mr. Hearne said, “and those allegations were not accepted by the Supreme Court.”
And I like this part:
(Hearne) added that if states actively provided a free form of identification proving citizenship, the number of people who would be disenfranchised would be very low.
Right on! And, that’s exactly what they do in Mexico ! Why can’t they do it in the United States?
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.