Jim Leach Doesn't Want You To Vote Either

Jim Leach Doesn't Want You To Vote Either

Neither does Tom Latham. (Steve King? Do you even need to ask?)

HR4844 amends the Help America Vote (sic) Act to require photo ID to vote, a copy of an ID to vote by mail, and proof of citizenship to register.

The rhetoric in the House yesterday was particularly heated, with a stream of African American and Latino Democrats taking to the floor to denounce a voter ID bill that they called a "modern-day poll tax" designed to disenfranchise minority, elderly and disabled voters who lean Democratic.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the bill "a tawdry attempt by Republicans to suppress the votes of millions of Americans."

Under the bill, all states would be required to check photo identification by the November 2008 elections. By the 2010 elections, states could accept only identification that shows proof of citizenship, a passport or a new federal "Real ID" card...

Sweet "moderate" Jim Leach voted his true Republican colors on this one. Nasty for old folks, young folks, poor folks, any kind of people who move a lot. No major inconvenience for Republicans homeowners.

Krusty takes me to issue on this one:

Any United States Citizen should easily be able to produce two forms of identification. I don’t think it’s asking too much of people to provide a birth certificate, social security card, drivers license, bank account record, or a pay stub to get a voter ID card.

That assumes you have a job, bank account and car... and spare cash to spend on copies of vital records instead of oh, say, generic mac and cheese for the kids. A lot of seniors don't have ready access to those records, and some very elderly women (say, 85 or older) don't even have their own social security numbers - just their late husband's with an A suffixed at the end!

Let's also consider folks who spend different parts of the year in different places: students and snowbirds. Different records will have different addresses and interfere with the legitimate right to vote.

For the sake of argument, let me put a proposal on the table for my Republican friends. A tradeoff. You want photo ID to vote? Let's talk about election day voter registration.