Say Cheese!

I pose a simple question to you, my valued blog readers. It’s a question that seems so simple, yet so many have turned this question’s topic into a convoluted, illogical pile of silliness that I really wish didn’t merit mentioning. It’s tantamount to arguing incessantly that 2+2 in fact DOES equal 19.

I’m going to hold off on the question for just a moment, however, while I give you some food for thought. Consider the following:

A photo ID is needed to open a bank account. . .

and society utters not a peep in protest.

A photo ID is needed on the campus of a college. . .

and society utters not a peep in protest.

A photo ID is needed to board an airplane. . .

and society utters not a peep in protest.

A photo ID is needed when one uses a debit/credit card or writes a check. . .

and society utters not a peep in protest.

A photo ID is needed to operate a vehicle. . .

and society utters not a peep in protest.

So here’s the question:

Why, pray tell, when it is suggested that one be required to present a photo ID before voting, society (the American Left, that is) lets out instantaneous screams of RACISM! BIGOTRY! INSENSITIVITY TO THE POOR! INSENSITIVITY TO THE IMMIGRANT! INSENSITIVITY TO THE ELDERLY!

The list goes on.

The state of Minnesota is currently weighing the possibility of requiring photo ID to vote, and recently this measure has moved one step closer to getting on the ballot in November. Proponents of the measure present an obvious case:

-Close to 100 people voted twice in 2008, with thousands of additional cases still in question.

-Thousands of deceased individuals appeared on voting records; some were shown to have “voted,” yet records indicate they had died prior to the election in question.

-Close to 100 felons were listed as newly registered to vote prior to the 2008 election.

-Investigations of the 2008 voting records indicate that over a thousand felons voted.

-Many counts of ID “vouching” have been proven to be fallacious. “Vouching” means that I could walk into a polling station and vouch that my non-citizen acquaintance (whom I’ve paid to come and vote the way I tell him) is in fact Joe Schmoe, a lifelong resident of these here United States.

-Several non-citizens were registered to vote prior to the 2008 elections, and with the aforementioned lapses in voting security, it is entirely conceivable that they could have voted.

(This data is courtesy of Minnesota Majority. To view the report, please click here.)

Each and every time a vote is cast in one of these shady measures, YOUR vote as a law-abiding, legally-eligible-to-vote citizen is devalued. Simply consider the razor-thin margins of certain election results in which just a few hundred votes tipped the scales. The 2008 election in which now Minnesota senator Al Franken won his seat illustrates it beautifully. Up until the wee hours of that election day, then Senator Norm Coleman was winning by a very, very slim margin. Al Franken ended up winning by slightly over 300 votes, and the eventual arrival at that result is something still debated today. Long story short, if your vote is negated by the person who was paid to vote in the opposite direction, what right do you have as a citizen? Your vote has been effectively stolen. Yet are those who raise charges of racism, bigotry, and insensitivity concerned with YOUR right as a voting citizen?

I want someone to verbalize in complete sentences containing no bumper sticker catch phrases and no beating around the bush, HOW requiring a photo ID to simply confirm that you are who you say you are, is RACIST? Or bigoted? Or insensitive? Of course, they make the claim it’s racist because the impoverished population often consists of several minority groups, and the impoverished might not have drivers’ licenses as they likely do not own a car. Or they can’t afford a license, or an ID. They make the claim that it’s bigoted because it’s an “obvious” attempt to suppress votes that the proponents of Voter ID don’t agree with by keeping those people from the polls. (Of course paying people to vote a certain way is fine, right?) They make the claim that it’s insensitive because (insert the wide-eyed, pitiful looking cat from the movie Shrek here) “what about all the homeless people, and the elderly?”

I return to my original argument. What about all the legitimate voters whose effectiveness as a voter is stolen from them by individuals who are not lawfully able to vote? Where do they fit in?

It’s a simple fix. We’re talking about a piece of plastic a few inches by a few inches. I don’t think figuring out how to make photo ID available to Minnesotans who don’t have one is rocket science.

I hate to give more attention to this than I absolutely have to, but recently a group called Minnesota Majority put out an image emphasizing how easy it is to commit voter fraud:

While I think Minnesota Majority was somewhat careless in their usage of this image; that is, they must understand that the valid arguments for Voter ID would be infinitely overshadowed by the insipid, ever flowing stream of race-cards, where is the controversy here? Naturally, there’s a giant stink being made about the fact that there’s a man in Mariachi (a Mexican tradition) garb, and an African American in prison garb. GASP.

Here’s the deal, kidlets. Current law makes it unequivocally clear that each of the figures (i.e. the dead, the fictitious, the non-citizen, the felon, etc.) in this image CANNOT vote. Could Minnesota Majority have chosen a less offensive nationality to represent the non-citizen immigrant population? What ethnic group could Minnesota Majority have chosen to represent the felon that would have proven less offensive? I hate to break it to you, but the majority of immigrants to this country are Hispanic. Specifically, Mexican! (that’s Pew Research data) This is not a bad thing! It’s just the way things currently are. A hundred years the foreign-born non-citizen population was entirely different. Get over it. And I hate to break it to you, but sadly there are felons from every ethnicity, including (shhhhhhh!) African Americans! Goodness. The razor-thin skin of the population in this country just kills me. It’s not racism or bigotry that’s represented in this image, it’s reality! The reality here is, of course, that even if the image looked like this:

the very same people screaming that the first image means those who want Voter ID are racist and bigoted, would find SOME way to make the same claims here.

Naturally, Minnesota Majority had to do something about the outrage, so they’ve tailored the image to cater to the “hypersensitive:”

This image should be a crowd pleaser, since the offending figures are now “white.” Because while pointing out that there are black people in prison and Hispanic non-citizens in this country is “terribly offensive,” pointing out that there are white people in prison, and white non-citizens is A-okay. As Charlie Brown would say, Good Grief.

In all seriousness, it gets exhausting, really, having to be told time and time and time again that because I’m white, conservative, and Christian, I’m a racist, bigoted, xenophobe. Always an intellectual treat. The funny thing is that the issue of Voter ID isn’t a Republican or Democrat concept; it should simply be common sense. Mary Ramirez goes to the polls to vote exactly ONE time as Mary Ramirez; it seems only logical that aside from bringing in a bill with my mailing address on it and pointing to my name on a list, I should really be asked to unequivocally affirm that I am who I say I am. Simple, yes- yet I’ve just spent over a thousand words trying to make the case that this is just. . .


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