Tuesday, April 29, 2008

This is your election on Voter Fraud

The Supremes have spoken, and voter fraud will now be a thing of the past in Indiana.

So long as Diebold isn't making the machines, that is.

The Indiana state legislature (in its infinite wisdom) has decided that, in order to combat Voter Fraud, voters will now be required to present either a valid driver's license or a free state voter ID card. But, as they say in Country Western music, freedom isn't free - the only way to get one of these precious voter ID cards is to present a certified birth certificate. If you have just moved to Indiana, get a new Driver's License.

None of these things are cheap. And if you're trying to lock out the poor and possibly the elderly, this is certainly an effective way of keeping the riff-raff out of the voting booths. At least, that was the argument put forward by the folks trying to invalidate this nifty new law.

However, in their Supreme wisdom, the court came down on the side of the "everyone's trying to put one over on us" types, who believe that most voters probably shouldn't.

Sadly, this means that even the Democrats will have a problem when it comes to voting for one of their own. Obama supporters tend to be the kind of people that are going to be hosed by this law, and so Clinton may come in and beat Obama because of a law passed by Republicans, and okay-ed by a predominantly Republican Supreme Court (though Justice Stevens crossed the wire to write the majority opinion this time).

Since the investigations have been going on extensively for some time, what the Justice Department found is that there is very little voter fraud. Not enough to affect a national election, anyway. Maybe a sheriff or mayor might get in, based on dead voters, etc., but not a whole president.

And Scalia, this last week on 60 Minutes, doing the whole "get over it" thing. Again. And blaming Al Gore for involving the courts. Oy. One of you old creeps, make sure you retire after the Dems have taken the White House back, because we can't live with this kind of pro-corporate, anti-personnel justice any more.