RE: What is the fuss about voter supression about?
August 14, 2013 at 6:36 pm
(This post was last modified: August 14, 2013 at 6:38 pm by Jackalope.)
(August 14, 2013 at 6:21 pm)Chuck Wrote: The US has a hallowed tradition of pretending everything on god's flat earth that's worth seeing by a christian must lie within the borders of US of A, most likely on this side of disneyland, therefore it is not all that common for poorer American families to actually have passports for other reasons.
The cost of US passport is $135, and it generally takes longer than 2 weeks from application to delivery. $135 is not an insubstantial sum for a family living at or below the poverty level. Furthermore, if you never had a passport and are applying for the first time, you must do so in person on a weekday at a designated passport office or post office, thus requiring you to take some time off from you low hourly wage job.
State issued ID cards (in lieu of a driver's license) are usually not so expensive, however it is still an expense that someone who's having trouble making ends meet will have difficulty affording.
ETA - the U.S. has a history of using poll taxes to suppress the minority / poor vote. While poll taxes have been ruled unconstitutional (and rightly so), requirements to obtain ID at the voter's expense are little different from a poll tax.
Requiring ID is not particularly onerous per se, but requiring ID that isn't provided free or that requires someone take time off work to obtain is. If such bills provided for a free and convenient means for low-income people to get ID, I would not necessarily oppose such a bill if voter fraud is of concern.
That's not the type of bill that proponents are pushing, however.