Show Your Papers and Vote for Romney

The White House is fiercely defending Americans’ right to vote without showing any identification papers. At stake is Barack Obama’s second term.

To Europeans, it seems perfectly logical and normal that a voter heading to the polls might have to show some form of photo ID, or that a citizen should own one in the first place. It is hard to imagine not voting without it. However, over on the other side of the Atlantic, things are in reverse. The federal government is engaged in a fight with states over their laws requiring photo IDs to vote in the upcoming November elections.

A court in Washington listened to the arguments made by the Texas government last week after a hold was put on their ID law. According to some experts, these laws might decide the fate of the election.

According to estimates, around 10 percent of all Americans do not own a driver’s license, which is a de facto identification document in the United States. The majority of this 10 percent (around 20 million voters) are poor, black or young. All of these demographics will most likely vote for Obama this fall.

Given this fact, it is small wonder that the divide in opinions runs along party lines. Democrats are adamant that photo ID at the polls is unnecessary and Republicans are raising the specter of voter fraud. “How many illegal aliens does the Obama regime need to win re-election?” mused Ginny Brown Waite, a retired GOP congresswoman. She went on to point out that, “Reporters have to show their picture credentials when they are in coverage mode. If reporters have to show ID, why not voters?”

Last Wednesday, Eric Holder, who is the first black attorney general, spoke at the annual NAACP convention, the oldest black civil rights organization in the country. “We will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious right,” he announced. He noted that “many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them — and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. We call those poll taxes.”

The phrase “poll tax” is very charged in American political lexicon. Right after Holder’s speech, John Cornyn, the senator from Texas condemned the speech as “shameful.”

Poll taxes were once levied in the U.S. by southern states, which lost the Civil War. Thanks to the defeat of the Confederacy, slavery was abolished and blacks were given the right to vote. However, the ex-Confederate states did everything they could to limit the ability of black citizens to vote through the so-called Jim Crow laws. One of these laws was the poll tax, which was a precondition for voting in those states. It almost completely disenfranchised the black vote, as the former slaves were poor.

Aside from the poll tax, a common requirement was also literacy tests, which also were difficult for former slaves, since many of them were never taught to read or write. Though the laws were not theoretically racist, their effect was. To take care of white and illiterate voters, grandfather clauses were put in place, which exempted any and all voters eligible to vote before 1861, from poll taxes or literacy tests.

One hundred years after the Civil War, the Supreme Court ruled that the poll tax was unconstitutional and gave control over voting laws in southern states to the Department of Justice. From 1965 onward, all changes to voting laws in former Confederate states were subject to DOJ review. When the Texas ID law came up, the DOJ annulled those changes, and the case wound up in court.

The Texas laws allow people to vote with not only their driving licenses, but also their gun permits. However, they do not recognize documents such as student IDs. Of course, those owning concealed carry licenses will vote overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney, while most students will probably vote for Obama.

Texas is not particularly important in this election scheme, as it will almost undoubtedly swing in Mitt Romney’s direction anyway. However, 20 other states are considering passing these laws, mostly in the South. Some, such as Florida and Virginia, also ban inmates from voting. The majority of inmates in these states and in the U.S. in general are black.

Time will tell if advocating for these new voting regulations will help the Republicans. On one hand, it will deny some Obama voters the right to vote, but on the other, it will motivate Obama’s base to come out to the polls. If so, the black community will once again vote overwhelmingly for Obama.