Listening to the media histrionics over the voter ID bill recently passed by the Virginia General Assembly and now sitting on Gov. Bob McDonnell’s desk, one might surmise that this common sense measure to prevent voter fraud is, as one pundit put it, “the second coming of Jim Crow.” It is not. Although the former Seat of the Confederacy does have an indefensible history of attempting to suppress the black vote, its voting system has been under Justice Department supervision for decades. For differing political reasons neither Republicans nor Democrats will publicly admit, the pending legislation’s unspoken target is illegal immigrants, not black voters.
Existing federal and state laws already require Virginians to provide proof of identity when registering to vote. Absent documentation, people who show up at the polls on Election Day are required to sign an affadavit, under oath, that they are qualified to vote before being issued a provisional ballot. The legislation would not allow such provisional ballots to be counted unless the individual returns with proper identification before the votes are certified. But it also expands the forms of acceptable identification to include college IDs, bank statements, utility bills, government documents and paychecks that list the voter’s name and address.
The argument that it would be too burdensome to require poor, elderly and minority citizens to produce identification in order to vote is specious at best because they already need ID to drive a car, qualify for Social Security and Medicare benefits, open a bank account, cash a check, buy alcohol, or board a commercial airline flight. Tighter documentation requirements only “disenfranchise” undocumented illegal immigrants, who are not legally allowed to vote. It’s notable that a recent report by the Brennan Center for Justice, which opposes voter ID laws, estimated that 21 million people have no government-issued IDs, a figure which neatly corresponds to some estimates of the nation’s illegal immigrant population.
However, a bipartisan commission co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker deemed photo identification of voters — which the Virginia bill does not even require — one of the “five pillars” of fair elections. And a December Rasmussen poll found that 69 percent of Americans believe such laws are not discriminatory, with popular support “high across virtually all demographic groups” because nobody wants their vote cancelled out by somebody with no legal right to cast a ballot. That’s why McDonnell, who has until April 9 to act on bills sent to him by the General Assembly, should promptly sign this bill.
