Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Afghans Vote With Photo IDs; Americans Don’t — Rob Long
The irony here is amazingly thick. From Investor’s Business Daily:
About 7 million Afghans turned out to vote in Saturday’s presidential election, many proudly brandishing a photo ID that our Department of Justice claims is a symbol of racism and voter intimidation.
In perhaps the most ironic tweet of all time, former Obama adviser David Axelrod noted concerning Saturday’s presidential election in Afghanistan: “Afghans defied threat of death to vote. Here’s hoping that Americans vote in large (numbers) this fall, despite efforts to make voting harder.”
Which is, of course, an almost ridiculous lie. Voter ID laws work in Afghanistan. And they work in the United States:
When Georgia passed a voter-ID requirement before the 2008 election, critics claimed it would suppress black and Hispanic votes and lead to a new Jim Crow era. However, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported afterward: “Election data reviewed by the AJC show that participation among black voters rose by 44% from 2006 — before the law was implemented — to 2010. For Hispanics, the increase for the same period was 67%. Turnout among whites rose 12%.”
In Georgia, black voter turnout for the midterm election in 2006 was 42.9%. It rose to 50.4% in the 2010 midterm. Black turnout also rose in Indiana and Mississippi after photo IDs were required.
When will they — when will David Axelrod — stop lying about this? When will they — when will Barack Obama — stop lying about this? Both have Tweeted their “congratulations” to the Afghan people for conducting a successful and fair vote, using photo IDs to ensure the integrity of the election.
Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe Axelrod and Obama don’t like it when elections are conducting with integrity.
The Left will never stop lying. Lying is their #1 tool for advancing their power. What grieves me to no end is that so many Americans buy the lies.
Afghans risked their lives to vote. David Axelrod thinks voting in an American midterm is in any way comparable? Voter ID laws are like suicide bombers?!
Of course photo IDs discriminate, it is much harder for a dead person to vote with a photo ID than it is for one to vote without a photo ID.
My favorite quote:
Axelrod may not have noticed, but millions of Afghans also defied the threat of death when they lined up earlier to obtain the same photo voter IDs they could carry as they voted in an election that will produce the first peaceful transition of power in that beleaguered nation’s history. Afghans proudly showed their photo voter IDs, just as President Obama did when he voted early in Chicago in the 2012 election.
…defied the threat of death! Can Dem voters here defy the threat of inconvenience?
Dem political fixers don’t think so.
I’ve said this before, but the political solution is very easy. The “discrimination” lie is based on the bigoted idea, held by the left, that minorities are less capable of simple administrative tasks. The GOP should put forth a Voter ID bill that includes measures for making it ridiculously easy (in the sense of effort, not in the sense of documentation) to obtain a federal ID. We have libraries on wheels and bloodmobiles–why not have mobile Voter ID vans (in addition to other outlets such as the DMV)? If you take the access question out of the equation, the Democrats are left with no argument.
We voted on local issues this past Tuesday and they still had a paper ballot with the black felt pen but the voter ID process was a little different.
The poll worker had iPads with a scanner. I had to present my driver’s license, they scanned it and handed it back to me. No more huge books, no more alphabetical lines, no more seeing all the names on the book and just pointing to one and signing the book. They scanned my ID and I signed the iPad. Easy, peasy.
I will never understand the discrimination argument. It doesn’t hold water and it never will.
Voter ID discriminates against core Democratic demographics. Specifically, the dead and the otherwise fraudulent. It is designed to do this, and no amount of bureaucracy will stop this from being the case.
Finally, the Afghans are doing the job that Americans won’t do.
They vote.
Shortly before the election in which a tiny percentage of New Yorkers elected Comrade Bill DiBlasio co-Mayor, I received 6 new voter registration notices in my mailbox. All were addressed to strangers who – to my knowledge – didn’t live with me and my family in our “flexible” 3bd apartment. You’ll be shocked, shocked to hear that all but one had a “D” in the party field except for an Independent.
Coincidence? Probably not, considering I lived a scant 1/2 mile from the Working Families Party HQ in the People’s Republic of Brooklyn.
I saved the registration notices thinking I would send them to the FEC or whatever agency to which one sends these kind of things, or perhaps set up some sort of elaborate Breitbart-esque sting operation.
Then I got smart, ditched my skinny jeans and Warby Parkers, and moved to Hoboken, NJ – thereby reclaiming an extra 4% of my income that formerly fed the NYC leviathan.
As we say – nay, said – in Brooklyn, “James O’Keefe, I ain’t.”
So to get away from election fraud and corruption you moved to Hudson County? Hudson County, NJ?
LOL. I’ve only been here a week. Give me time to sniff out the corruption and begin complaining. I’m conservative, not a psychic. I take the ferry over the Hudson or the PATH train so I’m not worried about sudden inexplicable traffic studies. :)
It is easy, and free.
For every scenario that they throw out as to why it’s discriminatory, it’s very easy to beat their scenario with facts. Facts simply don’t exist to Democrats.
Which is why these laws are actually popular!