Today I was on a conservative blog site where there was an almost cult-like refutation of the NAACP's intent to challenge voter ID laws nationwide.Unfortunately my cynicism doesn't allow me to believe that this new urgency for voter ID is motivated by concern for the integrity of our elections. Although arguments about the ubiquity of identification or the ease of its acquisition in our society are compelling, the most egregious recent controversy over proper democracy was in the 2000 election where the votes of duly registered voters were not counted because of arbitariness with a distinctly partisan odor. I haven't been convinced of the new serious, compelling circumstances requiring this new scrutiny of individuals showing up at the polls to vote. And I marvel at the ideological divide of those who want more people to show up and cast votes and those who are threatened by it.
In the present environment where wealth and therefore power is so unequally partitioned, it would seem the rich and powerful would have the greater ability and incentive to encourage and stimulate fraudulent votes, and yet the party most closely identified with the financial and corporate elite, is the political party most closely identified with measures that would place barriers, however insignificant they are reputed to be, between living, breathing people and voting. And though many of the commentators on that site advanced the observation that it is politically incorrect to notice that most of those impacted by the new and necessary requirements are among the "brainwashed" black and brown populations, it is nonetheless hard not to notice.
It is also hard not to notice the results in Maine this past Tuesday.
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