Whatever your opinion of the New York Times, you can grant that they certainly know how to make their point. In an editorial today, they take aim at Missouri's voter ID law, calling it as they see it - voter suppression for partisan gain.
The Republican legislators who pushed through Missouri's ID law earlier this year said they wanted to deter fraud, but that claim falls apart on close inspection. Missouri's new ID rules -- and similar ones adopted last year in Indiana and Georgia -- are intended to deter voting by blacks, poor people and other groups that are less likely to have driver's licenses. Georgia's law has been blocked by the courts, and the others should be too...
...Missourians who have driver's licenses will have little trouble voting, but many who do not will have to go to considerable trouble to get special ID's. The supporting documents needed to get these, like birth certificates, often have fees attached, so some Missourians will have to pay to keep voting. It is likely that many people will not jump all of the bureaucratic hurdles to get the special ID, and will become ineligible to vote.
As many as 200,000 Missouri voters do not have a government-issue photo ID. The "imposter voting" that ID supporters say they're trying to combat is all but nonexistent. Most cases of reported voter fraud involve absentee ballots, and this law doesn't tackle that question. The Times editorial staff draw only one conclusion:
Unduly onerous voter ID laws violate equal protection, and when voters have to pay to get the ID's, they are an illegal poll tax. They are also an insult to democracy, because their goal is to have elections in which eligible voters are turned away.
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