Why Democrats Fear Voter ID Laws
The Democratic Party’s fear of voter ID laws raises some interesting questions.
The Democratic Party’s fear of voter ID laws raises some interesting questions. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe the photo ID requirement for voting in the SAVE Act is legitimate and needed.
According to the latest Harvard Caps Harris poll, 71 percent of the American people support the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (or SAVE Act). Specifically, Pew found 83 percent support requiring photo ID to vote. The majority is broad - 82 percent of black voters, 77 percent of Asian American voters, and 76 percent of Hispanic American voters. Further, the concept is bipartisan, with support from 71 percent of Democrats and left-leaning voters and 95 percent support from the right.
As I said on “Mornings with Maria” Thursday, you would think with support this broad, passing the bill into law would be simple. One must wonder why so many Democratic elected officials oppose something supported by more than four-in-five Americans. Who do they think they are representing if they are on the short side of a split this wide.
The bill simply requires that we extend a requirement for voting that we already require for many activities.
You must have a photo ID to drive a car. You must have a photo ID to get on an airplane. You must have a photo ID to get a passport if you want to travel. There’s an extensive list of activities in which Americans take for granted the requirement to have a photo ID and no one complains about it. Since showing photo ID is common and 83 percent of Americans favor a photo ID requirement for voting, why are the Democrats are so deeply opposed?
The answer is simple.
Democrats oppose the SAVE Act because they want to maximize their ability to get votes from people who are not registered and rig elections.
I challenge you to explain a more believable motivation for the Democrats to fight against 83 percent of the American people. In nearly every one of their traditional constituencies, majorities of Democrat voters support photo ID requirements for voting.
My belief that the Democrats routinely try to rig election opponents goes back a long way. In 1973, I told the Atlanta Constitution that Republican candidates in Georgia must win by at least 4 percent to offset the inevitable theft attempts by Democrats.
I had developed that conviction through studying history.
Tammany Hall, the oldest Democratic Party club in the nation, was notorious for stealing votes. In a remarkable book, “Plunkitt of Tammany Hall,” one of the key managers of the Tammany system explained to a young reporter exactly how the machine stayed in power - and why he thought patronage for votes was better than government support as a system. His description of “honest graft” versus “dishonest graft” is a classic explanation of how the machine system worked.
The power of the machine was shown in 1928 when then-Democratic gubernatorial candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt was running behind on election night, and the upstate Republican counties were reporting slowly. Ed Flynn, the boss of the Bronx machine, took two decisive steps. First, he announced that he was sending lawyers upstate to stop any possible vote stealing by Republicans. Second, he let FDR know there would be a long count in the Bronx - the last Bronx precincts would not report until they knew how many votes they needed to overcome the GOP’s upstate margin. FDR won by 25,000 votes out of 4 million in a year when Republicans were winning virtually everywhere.
I personally encountered the long count strategy in 1964. I took time off of college to run a congressional campaign in north Georgia. I wrote about it in my book “March to the Majority.” We were running against Congressman Phil Landrum, the dean of the Georgia delegation and a powerful political leader. On Election Day, I learned that Forsyth County was not going to finish counting its votes.
This was rural north Georgia a generation ago. It was a tough, backwoods neighborhood at that time - the quintessential rural, old time county courthouse type of place. (Today, it is a beautiful area of nice homes as metropolitan Atlanta has absorbed it.) But in 1964, I called the Clerk of Courts because as a Pennsylvania-born, naive Army brat going to Emory University, I could not imagine failing to count votes during a presidential election.
The clerk on the phone was totally personable and friendly. He explained that his folks had been “manning them polls” all day and they were tired. He was sending them home for supper and they’d get together the next morning to count the votes over coffee and biscuits. I responded that they couldn’t simply ignore the vote count on the night of a presidential election. He pleasantly repeated that they were going home to rest. I got righteously angry, in an outsider way, and said I was going to come over there and make them count. He, again, pleasantly, said that he’d love to meet me. His cousin, the sheriff, would put me up for the night, and I could join them the next morning for the count.
I wisely backed down, because I was powerless. But I never forgot that the clerk, just like Flynn in 1928, was holding out enough votes to make sure that Landrum would have a comfortable margin of victory whatever it took.
The next time you hear a Democrat explain why they oppose voter ID just remember: They have a lot to lose if voting is honest and accurate.
If you don’t agree with this analysis, then answer this: Why do you think Democrats oppose 83 percent of the American people on this issue?
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It is very obvious and 85% of the US know that the DEMS have a history of voter fraud; this is why they let the illegal migrants in for 4 years, trying to get them to vote for the Democratic Party. But like all of the DEMs plans, it too is going up in smoke. I would really like to see Money Fraud Investigations for all the DEMs presently in office. For example: Maxine Waters is under investigation for millions of dollars that she and her family could not possibly have earned. Another is the ragheaded lady that just got kicked out of congress. Where did she and her husband get millions? Yeah, I do believe that most if not all blue states should be investigated for Money Fraud. If the DEMS can get voted back in power, then they can continue to coverup and steal more money from the American People. How in the world did we get here!