The left always wants us to be more like Europe except when it comes to voter I.D.

JULY 2, 2014

U.N. Poll Watchers Baffled U.S. Doesn't Require I.D. to Vote

Katie Pavlich

11/6/2012 7:44:00 PM - Katie Pavlich

Those of us who thought U.N election observers would be completely worthless or unhelpful today, were wrong. U.N. observers are expressing their surprise at how much trust Americans put into the election system without verification and cannot believe Voter I.D. isn't a national requirement to vote.

"It's an incredible system," said Nuri K. Elabbar, who traveled to the United States along with election officials from more than 60 countries to observe today's presidential elections as part of a program run by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). Your humble Cable guy visited polling places with some of the international officials this morning. Most of them agreed that in their countries, such an open voting system simply would not work.

 The most often noted difference between American elections among the visitors was that in most U.S. states, voters need no identification. Voters can also vote by mail, sometimes online, and there's often no way to know if one person has voted several times under different names, unlike in some Arab countries, where voters ink their fingers when casting their ballots.

The international visitors also noted that there's no police at U.S. polling stations. In foreign countries, police at polling places are viewed as signs of security; in the United States they are sometimes seen as intimidating.

As we all know by now, those opposed to an identification requirement at the polls believe Voter I.D. laws disenfranchise minority voters. As I observed earlier today when I voted in Virgnina, a state with a Voter I.D. requirement, minorities in line with me had zero issues complying with the law and they all had photo I.D. Also, 75 percent of registered voters believe Voter I.D. should be required at the polls.

While the Obama Justice Department, led by Attorney General Eric Holder, uses its authority to block some state voter ID laws (Texas), and investigate others (Pennsylvania), a newly-released poll shows overwhelming public support for laws requiring voters to present identification before casting a ballot.  That support crosses party lines, racial lines, economic lines, educational lines, and just about every other line in the electorate at large.

In the survey, the Washington Post asked, “In your view, should voters in the United States be required to show official, government-issued photo identification — such as a driver’s license — when they cast ballots on election day, or shouldn’t they have to do this?”  Among all adults, 74 percent said voters should present ID, versus 23 percent who said they should not.  Among registered voters, the numbers were 75 percent to 23 percent.

When something has the support of 75 percent of the voters, plus the approval of the Supreme Court, which by a six-to-three vote in 2008 upheld Indiana’s voter ID law, one might think the Justice Department would give up trying to stop it.

Critics Who Claim Voter ID Laws Are Racist Won’t Like the Results of This Study

If there was a hidden agenda behind North Carolina’s voter ID law to suppress minority turnout – as the law’s opponents claim – it hasn’t worked, based on a study showing not only more voters overall, but an increase in black voter turnout especially, after the law’s implementation.

AP

The findings came before a scheduled hearing next week where the U.S. Justice Department will ask a U.S. District Court for an injunction against the law going into the November midterms. The Obama administration has argued that such a law will make it more difficult for minorities to vote.

Comparing May 4, 2010 North Carolina primary election data with the May 14, 2014 primary data, the study found that voter turnout increased across the board, but particularly among black voters, where it increased by 29.5 percent, compared to an increase of white voter turnout of 13.7 percent. The findings were based on Census Bureau data and public names who signed the voter rolls.

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, commissioned the study and included the findings in an amicus brief for the July 7 hearing. Judicial Watch was joined in its legal brief by the Allied Educational Foundation and by former Buncombe County commissioner candidate Christina Kelley Gallegos-Merrill.

The North Carolina law also eliminated same-day voter registration, which is why Gallegos-Merrill joined the brief. She alleges that her close loss in the state resulted from ineligible same-day registrations.

North Carolina adopted a law in line with 37 other states that don’t allow same-day voter registration, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.

“The recent election in North Carolina shows that the Obama administration is engaged in a race-baiting canard when it suggests that voting integrity measures suppress minority votes,” Fitton said. “It is high time that the Obama administration comes into line with the majority of the American people who want to strengthen rather than weaken ballot box integrity.”

One expert prediction from the federal court filing projected that 915,426 North Carolina voters would be burdened in off-year, non-presidential elections. Specifically, this was projected to mean 209,959 black voters and 710,567 white voters facing burdens that might dissuade them from voting.

Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, led the study and analyzed the data.

The brief asserts these finding “fundamentally undermines” the Justice Department’s case for an injunction against the law, which includes about 900 pages of predictions and probabilities of how voter turnout would go down. The brief says the “expert reports are unreliable, because they predicted the opposite of what happened.”

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed the bill into law in August 2013.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of voter ID in a 6-3 decision in 2008. Since that time, 34 states have adopted some form of ID laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In a closer vote, the high court handed down a 5-4 ruling in June 2013 to strike down provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that require states with a history of preventing blacks from voting to get approval from the U.S. Justice Department before changing election laws.