What's wrong with requiring voter ID?

03-14-2012 • The Political Commentator

Why is proving who you are in order to be allowed to vote such a bad idea! I was listening to Bloomberg Radio this morning when a guest from SMU came on to discuss the foibles of requiring voter ID. My simple understanding of voter ID is that in order to participate in the process you need to prove that you are who you say you are. In other words one person, one vote but that the person casting that vote needs to actually be the one signing their name. The guests point was that the push for instituting voter ID requirements comes from predominantly Republican controlled states, basically saying that this type of legislation is discriminatory, wrong and to blame the GOP. The main problem in this guest from SMU's mind was that most of the people who won't have a picture ID are poor, that most of the poor are Democrat voters and that therefore this is political posturing from the Right to try and "steal" elections by exclusion. In essence then, this guest feels that to r