Wednesday, August 01, 2018

Fight against gerrymandering more important than debate over voter ID

Another alluring sound byte on the campaign trail, but you don't usually need ID to buy groceries. However, there are a lot of things, in society, that do require ID these days. Unfortunate, in a way, how security conscious we have become.

My liberal base might not want me to say this, but I can sort of see the rational for picture ID when voting. Sort of. The fight against gerrymandering is more important than the fight about ID, in my opinion. Gerrymandering is a big problem.

The fight to preserve lack of ID requirement for voting uses lots of political capital. Conservatives can score sound byte points by mentioning all the things that require ID; even if groceries are not among them. Meanwhile gerrymandering of political districts threatens to destroy the value and incentive for voting. Seems like Democrats tend to be better than Republicans in trying to take steps against gerrymandering even though both parties have contributed to the problem as well. Republicans tend to be the worse. The fight against gerrymandering seems more important to me than the fight over voter ID.

Here are a few other thoughts related to ID.

Voter ID is kind of a mute point here in Washington State as this state is all absentee ballot. No, we don't have to include a copy of picture ID when sending in the ballot. Really, absentee ballot is the way to go for voter participation.

The whole ID experience isn't necessarily getting worse at least in my case. These days we can make purchases with just a debit card and pin number. Back in my college days, I remember trying to buy text books at the college bookstore my freshman year. I gathered up a big stack of books, a heavy stack. Then waited in a 40 minute line to get to the checkout counter. They didn't take checks without several credit cards for ID. I had no credit cards. I had to go down to my bank, get cash and then start over. After that experience, I have been leery of paying by check. Glad checks are mostly a thing of the past.

Here's another problem. Seems like just about every job requires a driver's license. I don't drive so I am ineligible for many kinds of employment in this car based society. I have non driver's picture ID.

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