Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Requiring American citizens to show a state-issued photo ID to cast a ballot in American elections isn’t burdensome or illegally discriminatory. Most law-abiding people have such forms of identification, and discriminating between citizen and non-citizen in this context is common sense.
Liberals claim that voter ID laws burden racial minorities (especially blacks), the “poor,” and the elderly. They invoke an era when the government used poll taxes and literacy tests, created to burden poor and poorly educated blacks.
But times have changed. Claiming in 2016 that showing ID is “racist” is to imply that minorities are too lazy and/or unintelligent to go to the DMV like everyone else and obtain a photo ID card. In some cases, applicants can get the card for free.
Opponents have challenged North Carolina’s voter ID law, and a federal court is hearing arguments. From Reuters:
The case tests a key piece of broad voting restrictions passed after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that North Carolina and other states with a history of discrimination no longer needed federal approval for voting law changes affecting minorities.
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The trial in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, will be the second held over the legality of sweeping changes made to the state’s election law in 2013.Last summer, U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder heard arguments about the shortened early voting period, end of same-day registration, elimination of pre-registration for 16 and 17 year olds and banning of provisional ballots cast outside the correct precinct from being counted. He has not issued a decision.
The voter ID requirement is getting a separate vetting after lawmakers amended it in 2015 ahead of the initial trial.
A federal court denied President Barack Obama’s request to block the North Carolina law and post federal observers at the polls.
Photo credit: apalapala (Creative Commons) – Some rights reserved
