Voter ID efforts suspect
I keep hearing that Iowa needs to pass legislation that prevents voter fraud. And the proponents of the measure use language that appeals to the sensibilities of regular people, saying, "If you need an ID to (insert any common activity), then why not require ID to make sure elections are fair?"
And that's when my ears perk up. That sure has the ring of demagoguery, the same rhetoric used in every debate on nearly any polarizing issues where someone has a thinly veiled agenda.
I must ask if this insistence on requiring government identification at the polling place is based on actual voter fraud problems or does this amount to statistical wizardry crafted by some organized elite faction to sway outcomes to their preferred side.
Voting is a fundamental right in our republic and it should not be a difficult undertaking for citizens to exercise. True, government and businesses are pushing harder to ask us to prove our identity at every turn, but the reasons for that climate are not the fault of the citizen. It's a mere convenience for the automation of information, correspondence and transactions.
The question you ought to ask is, should people have to jump through extra hoops to exercise their rights as US citizens? If I, as an American, have the right to be left alone, for example, then I have a right to not obtain government identification papers. You must not be forced to forfeit one right in order to exercise another.
If every time we turn around, the government demands that we produce papers, then we become a controlled state; we forfeit our personal sovereignty. We associate that kind of state-control with Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, which we vehemently oppose and find repulsive. We value the idea that the government has no cause, right or standing to stop, detain, inconvenience or generally bother people for any reason, unless the people have committed a crime against other people, or their property, or that public safety requires it.
There's no public safety issue here. And there appears to be no voter fraud issue either. People are trying to solve a problem in Iowa that simply doesn't exist -- at the behest of a well-funded organization that wants to use the peoples' government for its own profit and purpose.
Those who value liberty and freedom need to think critically about what this will mean for us. We need to understand the direction such measures would take us as a nation; more toward government control and the loss of the freedoms guaranteed by our charter.
And that's when my ears perk up. That sure has the ring of demagoguery, the same rhetoric used in every debate on nearly any polarizing issues where someone has a thinly veiled agenda.
I must ask if this insistence on requiring government identification at the polling place is based on actual voter fraud problems or does this amount to statistical wizardry crafted by some organized elite faction to sway outcomes to their preferred side.
Voting is a fundamental right in our republic and it should not be a difficult undertaking for citizens to exercise. True, government and businesses are pushing harder to ask us to prove our identity at every turn, but the reasons for that climate are not the fault of the citizen. It's a mere convenience for the automation of information, correspondence and transactions.
The question you ought to ask is, should people have to jump through extra hoops to exercise their rights as US citizens? If I, as an American, have the right to be left alone, for example, then I have a right to not obtain government identification papers. You must not be forced to forfeit one right in order to exercise another.
If every time we turn around, the government demands that we produce papers, then we become a controlled state; we forfeit our personal sovereignty. We associate that kind of state-control with Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, which we vehemently oppose and find repulsive. We value the idea that the government has no cause, right or standing to stop, detain, inconvenience or generally bother people for any reason, unless the people have committed a crime against other people, or their property, or that public safety requires it.
There's no public safety issue here. And there appears to be no voter fraud issue either. People are trying to solve a problem in Iowa that simply doesn't exist -- at the behest of a well-funded organization that wants to use the peoples' government for its own profit and purpose.
Those who value liberty and freedom need to think critically about what this will mean for us. We need to understand the direction such measures would take us as a nation; more toward government control and the loss of the freedoms guaranteed by our charter.
