Right To Vote Under Attack? Maybe, But Not How We Think

Attorney General Eric Holder told a council of African American church leaders that their right to vote is under attack.  He did that in a speech before the council, talking about how discrimination exists in these days and mentioned how the efforts to ask people to show a picture ID is a way to keep people out of the voting booth.

I agree that the right to vote is under attack, but not in the way that Attorney General Holder thinks.  I’m certain that there is somewhere in America, someone that is prejudice about who should and shouldn’t vote.  However, I do not believe that those that believe it are in anything other than an extreme minority on the fringe of society.

I believe the idea of the right to vote is under attack by those that believe that one person might be entitled to vote more than once.  What we have seen is the voting rolls full of dead people that actually vote.  We have heard about those that bus people in to polling places to vote and they really have no idea what they are doing or who they are representing.  We continue to hear about how the voter ID laws that are around the country are going to be something that keeps people from voting, but I think that this is a case of something being blown out of proportion.

With voter ID laws, most of us have a picture ID.  If you don’t you can easily get one and it is cheap, if not free.  If you have it, then you can vote.  You can also buy beer and do all sorts of things that people can do with an ID.  What you can’t do, if everyone has to produce an ID, is vote often.  We heard the old phrase “vote early and often” and to me, it seems like someone is trying to tie up common sense in an old argument that has no weight in the modern world.  There are not widespread problems with minorities not being able to vote.

What we do have is a group of people that are trying to hold on to power.  They will do it in any way that they can.  Rather than doing it the right way, by doing what people want, they would rather scare people into thinking that the racists are out to get them.  It is disingenuous at best.