Sorry I’m getting this to you a bit late, but my expectation is that most readers have nevertheless not heard this story yet.

Last month, former Congressman Artur Davis (D-AL) wrote a refreshingly honest mea culpa when it comes to the issue of Voter ID laws and voter fraud. His basic point is contained in his first sentence: “I’ve changed my mind on voter ID laws – I think Alabama did the right thing in passing one – and I wish I had gotten it right when I was in political office.”

Davis explains how he mindlessly accepted “the rhetoric of various partisans and activists” who argued that Voter ID laws are simply a form of suppressing black votes. It’s brave of Davis, who always had a bit of an independent streak, to swim against the liberal tide. Even Bill Clinton has compared Voter ID laws to Jim Crow.

Davis’ entire article is well worth reading.

Unfortunately, protecting our elections has become a partisan issue, with the left claiming that such things as Voter ID laws or banning same-day voter registration are thinly-veiled racism. The Heritage Foundation shreds the racism and suppression arguments in a study on the “new myths on Voter ID“, in which they also point out that major left-leaning newspapers (the NY Times and Washington Post) erroneously claim that voter fraud itself is a myth.

Wall Street Journal reporter and senior editor at The American Spectator, John Fund, has written an entire book on “Stealing Elections“, as well as having spoken at Heritage, a brief podcast of which is available here.

A related discussion has surfaced recently here in Colorado, with Republican Secretary of State having tried to stop sending ballots to “inactive voters", suggesting those ballots are too easily grabbed and filled out by others. A court rebuffed Gessler’s effort and the far-left Soros-funded group ProgressNow Colorado is crowing that 5.5 percent of “inactive” voters (people who didn’t vote in 2010) cast ballots in 2011. But that proves nothing about Gessler’s contention regarding the potential abuse of ballots.

All of this leads me to two main points:

First, I am irredeemably against voting by mail. The ease of fraud is too high and the ability of people who have not thought about or understood the issues to vote just because they can also bothers me. That said, if I were a liberal, I would claim that requiring a postage stamp to vote suppresses the vote of poor people. (I shouldn’t have put that in writing because I’ll give some liberal state legislator the idea that the state should include postage-paid return envelopes with ballots.)

Second, as we all learned in high school social studies, or civics, or government, or whatever it was called at your school (if you are old enough to have gone to a school that wasn’t too busy teaching you that Columbus was a villain), voting is more properly a responsibility than a right. It is not the proper role of government to sacrifice the integrity of a vote for access to that vote as long as all American citizens have equal legal right to go to a polling place and cast a vote – after proving they are who they say the are and that they are eligible to participate in the most important aspect of our political process.

As long as all legally sane and non-criminal residents of any particular state are treated by the same standard, the burden of proof must be on the voter, not the government, to show that he is allowed to cast a ballot. Having a government-issued ID is far from an overly burdensome requirement. Cries of “suppression” should be treated with the lack of seriousness they deserve, not least because of lack of any evidence of suppression by these laws but also because the cries provide cover, whether intentionally or not, for voter fraud which erodes the foundation of our republic – fraud which, perhaps not coincidentally, almost always favors Democrats.

Finally, when Democrats such as Congressman Steve Israel (NY) say they “lose sleep over voter suppression” and that Republicans, by supporting Voter ID laws, “are embarked on a strategy that could deny millions of voters their right to go to the polls and actually vote for a candidate", are they not being incredibly insulting, if not racist? It is neither very difficult nor expensive to get a government-issued ID in most states, whether a driver’s license or simply an ID card. According to Rep. Israel, many of the voters most likely to support him are somehow incapable of accomplishing a task that roughly 90 percent of Americans of voting age of managed. And the people who are easily able to go to the DMV or other state office to get an ID are somehow more likely to vote Republican. (Not based on the people I saw the last time I was in line!) Claims of voter suppression by Voter ID laws – little more than calling people stupid – are just more evidence that the truly ingrained racism in American politics is within the Democratic Party.

For more on this, please listen to my interview of former Justice Department (Voting Section) attorney Christian Adams, especially segment 4, here:
http://rossputin.com/blog/backbone.php/backbone-radio-october-23-2011