The Democrats inside the Beltway are fighting a losing battle on the voter ID question. A Rasmussen poll conducted in February found that 60% of likely Democratic voters sided with 89% of Republicans and 77% of unaffiliated voters in supporting voter identification. Even blacks, who historically vote Democrat, back voter ID laws by a healthy majority (69%). (RELATED: New evidence indicates enough illegal votes in Georgia to tip 2020 results)
But if the party of no can’t win the argument by claiming that voter ID laws discriminate against minorities, they’ll find alternatives. Take Kamala Harris’s latest objection to voter identification, shared in an interview with former CNN anchor that ran on BET on Friday.
At 17:40 in the video that follows, Harris is asked whether Democrats should compromise on the question of voter ID to get their sweeping voter reform law passed. Some, including Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock, already have agreed to compromise. But, Harris, ever a practitioner of the dog-ate-my-homework school of Washingtonian politics identified what she surely believes is a clever exception:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
I don’t think that we should underestimate what that could mean. Because in some people’s mind, that means, well, you’re going to have to Xerox or photocopy your ID to send it in to prove that you are who you are. Well, there’s a whole lot of people, especially people who live in rural communities— there’s no Kinko’s, there’s no OfficeMax near them.
People have to understand that when we’re talking about voter ID laws, be clear about who you have in mind and what would be required of them to prove who they are. Of course, people have to prove who they are, but not in a way that makes it almost impossible for them to prove who they are.
Now, class, who sees a fly in Harris’s ointment? Did you notice, first of all, her assumption that everyone from now on will vote by mail? In reality, casting your ballot in person at a designated community polling place has been the standard for the first 217 years of the nation’s history. It should remain the standard, and not the jury-rigged method that was adopted in 2020 allegedly because of COVID.
Second, we live in an era where 85% of Americans have smartphones, which can take snapshots of IDs, or access at home to other technology (such as a scanner) that will allow them to do the same. Most public libraries, moreover, have photocopiers, which can be used free of charge or for a minimal fee.
Note finally Harris’s not-so-subtle dig at rural America, which she portrays as non-tech-savvy, ignorant bumpkins. Presumably, she is thinking of the same poor saps who cling to their guns and religion that a former president spoke of.
