ID, Please!

The Memphis Flyer's latest cover story focuses on new requirements for voters. Beginning on January 1, 2012, all voters will be required present a government-issued photo ID at the voting booth. Last month, Mississippi also passed a new constitutional amendment that requires government-issued photo IDs to be presented by all voters.

To many this may seem rather trivial. In fact, many friends that I have discussed it with have replied, "What's the big deal?" The Flyer's story highlights some of the key points. I grew up in Mississippi and have worked at the voting booths both during the 2008 General Election and local elections last August. The first time I worked there I was shocked to see that so many of the voters were elderly blacks. The fact that most of the voters were black should not be surprising. My home county is 70% black. Furthermore, in 1990 it was the second poorest county in the country in terms of percentage living under the poverty line. A large gap existed between wealthy white farmers and the black majority. In fact, for a time in the 1980s it was referred to as "America's Ethiopia." Things have improved significantly with the growth of the casino economy but the Mississippi Delta still remains an area with high levels of poverty. The highest levels are among black citizens - who make up the vast majority of the Delta's population. This is similar to Memphis.

My point is that, particularly in this part of the country, the demographics are characterized by high percentages of blacks, who therefore make up a large part of the electorate. Furthermore, the highest percentages of those who live in poverty are blacks.

The connection between poverty and obtaining government-issued photo IDs is simple. In order to obtain a government-issued photo ID, one has to go to a driver's license office. Driver's license offices are often quite a distance away. For example, the nearest office to my hometown is 1 hour south of town in Clarksdale, MS. For those who don't have transportation it's ridiculous to expect them to somehow make this trip. For those who work it's even harder. Our country already has woefully low voter turnout. Why pass these requirements? There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud anywhere in America, at all. It only disenfranchises poor voters, who more often than not are going to vote for the Democratic candidate. In TN, the new voter requirements were passed by a state legislature that is overwhelmingly Republican. This seems like an extension, albeit to a weaker degree, of disenfranchisement efforts during Jim Crow. After all, in some sense this is a poll tax. This IDs cost money to obtain. If government-issued photo IDs are going to be a requirement then citizens should be able to obtain these IDs at their voter registration locations.