What we have to fear from ID cards

[Lanya]

Seamus:
<<Elderly can't get IDs?>>

No, a lot can't, not if they're no longer driving or may never have driven; if they're in nursing homes some don't have their birth certificates.
I had to get a birth certificate sent from another state in a hurry. It cost about $38.  That's really not cheap. Then I had to get help to lift the person into my car, and take them to the driver's license bureau (to get a photo ID, not a driver's license, obviously).  That was one elderly person.    Took several hours and some $$.   

[BT]

In Georgia, they would have come to the home and given her an ID on the spot, for free.

Any state or federal issued photo ID will suffice. My VA card works.

[Michael Tee]

<<In Georgia, they would have come to the home and given her an ID on the spot, for free.>>

Just like that, huh?

Let me tell you how it would probably work in the real world.  Somebody comes from the state to some slum dwelling and sees an elderly black person who looks to them like 20,000,000 other elderly black people and starts asking who are you and how long have you lived here and who are these other people and where did you go to school and where are your kids and the elderly black person gets a little confused about some of the answers and on a good day they just might get the ID after an hour or two of insults, challenges, disbelief and hostility and on a bad day they might not.  They tell all their friends about the experience.  Some of the friends just don't want the hassle, particularly as they can expect that both they and their card will undergo a double round of hassles by Republican "poll-watchers" at the polling station.  Some of them just won't go for the double hassle.  And that's cool, because the Republicans aren't aiming to ELIMINATE the votes of the poor and black, just to dampen them down considerably, as much as they can.

  All in the name of fighing "voter fraud" which NOBODY knows the prevalence of.  With no evidence that photo ID can't be faked anyway, so that the real effect on "voter fraud" will probably turn out to be non-existent.  Basically, you have a phenomenon that has not been demonstrated in any credible survey to have any significant effect on any more than a small number of elections, and the issue has been hijacked to justify phony "anti-fraud" measures that actually and demonstrably disenfranchise the poor, the elderly, the black and the homeless.

[_JS]

The humorous part is that the UK National ID cards have nothing to do with voting. Even the Tories (the Conservative Party) would not be as openly racist as the Republicans have been on this issue and with immigration, unless you dig up Enoch Powell's body or Sir Joseph Keith.

[BT]

Just like that, huh?

Sure. They offer free id to those who can't afford them and will go to the nursing home to make them.

[BT]

he humorous part is that the UK National ID cards have nothing to do with voting. Even the Tories (the Conservative Party) would not be as openly racist as the Republicans have been on this issue and with immigration, unless you dig up Enoch Powell's body or Sir Joseph Keith.

What is racist is the assumption that blacks are too stupid, too lazy, too shiftless to go get an id like poor whites do.

[_JS]

he humorous part is that the UK National ID cards have nothing to do with voting. Even the Tories (the Conservative Party) would not be as openly racist as the Republicans have been on this issue and with immigration, unless you dig up Enoch Powell's body or Sir Joseph Keith.

What is racist is the assumption that blacks are too stupid, too lazy, too shiftless to go get an id like poor whites do.

What is racist is assuming that inner city blacks even have driver's licenses considering that they do not own automobiles as we saw clearly in Hurricane Katrina. What is racist are comments like "Hurricane Katrina did more to clean up public housing in New Orleans than we could have in fifty years."

My point is that a Tory in the UK would not make statements as Republicans like DeLay, Lott, and others have with blatantly racist meaning. That is left to the BNP.

[BT]

A photo id does not have to be a drivers license, so that argument is a straw man.

I voted with my VA card last election. Any government issued photo id card will do.

Spare us your sanctimony. It was democrats who instituted jim crow, it was democrats who kept blacks out of unions up to the 70's.

And it is democtrats who are saying blacks can't get a photo id like white folks can.

[_JS]

A photo id does not have to be a drivers license, so that argument is a straw man.

I voted with my VA card last election. Any government issued photo id card will do.

Spare us your sanctimony. It was democrats who instituted jim crow, it was democrats who kept blacks out of unions up to the 70's.

And it is democtrats who are saying blacks can't get a photo id like white folks can.

And what form of photo ID is far and away the most prevalent?

Spare me your defensiveness. First, I'm not here to defend the Democrats. They buy into the same dirty system that the Republicans do.

On the other hand, your sense of history does seem to be stuck. It is not Democrats who are electing people who speak before the CCC. It is not Democrats who are making scapegoats of the Mexicans. It is primarily Republicans who salivate at the Confederate Flag remaining on the Deep South states flags. I'll grant you that both parties have had racist attitudes towards Arabs and both seem to still worship at the altar of Israel.

But when Harold Ford Jr. ran for Senate in 2006, he was more right-wing than his opponent. I couldn't stand either of them. And yet, the Republicans found a way to run a brazenly racist ad. Would Willi Horton have made an impact if he were white? Of course not. Why did they wait until South Carolina to talk about John McCain's "ethnic" child? Why do Republicans have to address the folks at Bob Jones University, where bigotry is honored?

Again, my point, going back to the original post, is that the Tories in today's UK would not speak these words or take the actions that are so blatantly racist as these Republican politicians (I'm comparing two right of center parties). In fact, doing so would likely have one reprimanded by his or her party. Yet, in the GOP it seems to be a standard.

[BT]

Who cares what the tories would do. WHo cares if drivers licences are more prevalent than other forms of id's. It is blatantly racist to assume blacks can not obtain alternate id like whites can.

[_JS]

Who said whites can do so easily?

I don't recall saying so.

[BT]

If whites can't do so easily then the law is not aimed at blacks. Make up your mind.

[kimba1]

confederate flag
hmm

would people who support that flag support immigrants rights to wave their former countries flag?
unlike the confederacy those counties still exist.

[Amianthus]

would people who support that flag support immigrants rights to wave their former countries flag?
unlike the confederacy those counties still exist.

The flag you're thinking of is the CSA "Battle Flag" used by the military. The CSA had it's own national flag, and it looked very similar to the current USA flag.

And I don't believe that anyone has even proposed forbidding people from other nations from flying their flags. It's just against the law to fly it ABOVE the USA flag. If it's flown at the same level, or below, the USA flag (or flown on it's own, not in display with the US flag), it's not a problem.

I see flags of other nations flying all over the place.

[Seamus]

I don't know if I'm supposed to copy/paste everything I've read, but I'm just going to link.  (There's a lot of reading.)

These are some ACLU links.  Personally, I think they're an extremist group.  I think they are well intentioned and I think they've done good things.  But much of what they believe goes too far, imo.

Civil Rights Groups Oppose National Voter ID Requirements http://www.votingrights.org/resources/downloads/Voter%20ID%20Letter%2009-13-06.pdf
ID & Voting Rights: 21st Century Voting Rights Barrier http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/08/ID_voting_rights.html