Rand Paul evolves: Voter ID “Offends People”

The people it is offending will never vote for Rand. The people who would have voted for him are now less likely. This wasn't the Aqua Buddha's best day. 

Via Daily Caller:

Kentucky senator and insurgent Republican Rand Paul denounced Voter ID law during a Friday interview with the New York Times, instantly becoming the most prominent GOP opponent against the legislation that is popular within his party.

“Everybody’s gone completely crazy on this voter ID thing,” Paul told the Times before speaking with a group of black pastors in Memphis, TN. “I think it’s wrong for Republicans to go too crazy on this issue because it’s offending people.”

According to the NYT, Paul did not criticize Voter ID for being bad policy, but for offending voters that Paul thinks could swing to the GOP.

Keep on reading…

Obama's Justice department suing North Carolina over new voting rules

Voter ID scares democrats to death...

Via FoxNews:

The Justice Department will announce Monday that it is suing the state of North Carolina for alleged racial discrimination over tough new voting rules.
A person briefed on the department’s plans told Fox News that the suit would claim that the North Carolina statute violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and would seek to have the state subject to federal pre-clearance before making “future voting-related changes.” The person also said the suit would be filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Nashville, Tenn.
In asking for pre-clearance, the Justice Department will ask a federal judge to place the four provisions in North Carolina’s new law under federal scrutiny for an indeterminate period.
Keep on reading…

Interesting: Minority Voting Actually Increased Dramatically After Georgia Passed Voter ID Law…

Democrats hardest hit...

Via Politico Playbook:

Atlanta Journal-Constitution p. A1, “Voter turnout surges amid five-year ID law: ‘Rhetoric on both sides’ overblown, AJC review finds,” by Shannon McCaffrey (who moved to AJC from AP last year): “Few things stir as much political passion as voter ID laws. Since Georgia lawmakers passed one of the nation’s first and strictest laws in 2005, each side has charged the other with trying to undermine the electoral process. When Georgia became one of the first states in the nation to demand a photo ID at the ballot box, both sides served up dire predictions. Opponents labeled it a Jim Crow-era tactic that would suppress the minority vote. Supporters insisted it was needed to combat fraud that imperiled the integrity of the elections process. But both claims were overblown, according to a review by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of statewide voting patterns [in general elections] in the five years since the law took effect. … Georgia’s ID law has been in place for two major statewide general elections: 2008 and 2010.

The idea that minorities and seniors are too pathetic to be able to get a photo ID card is insulting to minorities and seniors...

Hero: North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signs voter photo ID law...

Eric Holder busily prepares another lawsuit...

Via WaPo:

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) on Monday signed into law one of the nation’s most wide-ranging Voter ID laws.
The move is likely to touch off a major court battle over voting rights, and the Justice Department is weighing a challenge to the new law, which is the first to pass since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. 

(Rob Taylor/AP Photo/The Daily Reflector)

The measure requires voters to present government-issued photo identification at the polls and shortens the early voting period from 17 to 10 days. It will also end pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-old voters who will be 18 on Election Day and eliminates same-day voter registration.

Texas to re-establish its voter ID law after the Supreme Court 1965 Voting Rights Act smack-down...

Texas is awesome...

Via Daily Caller:

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced Tuesday his state will re-establish its voter ID law after the Supreme Court struck down a section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required certain states to seek federal approval before changing the electoral process.

Congress must devise a new racial calculus to determine which counties and states must petition the federal government to change election laws, the majority announced.
Texas greeted the ruling with plans to implement its suspended voter ID laws and district maps.

“With today’s decision, the State’s voter ID law will take effect immediately. Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government,” Abbott’s statement read.

Keep on reading…

Joe Biden: Voter ID supporters are immoral or something...

Allowing someone to steal a vote is what is immoral...

Via Politico:

Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday bashed voting rights requirements — calling them “immoral, callous” — and warned of political consequences for those who try to impose barriers to casting a ballot.

“To me it is the most immoral, callous thing that can be done, the idea of making it more difficult to vote,” Biden said at the annual gala dinner of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a minority-focused public policy organization.

The vice president pointed to data indicating that in 2011 and 2012 at least 180 bills in 41 states were introduced that aimed to stiffen requirements for voting — voter identification measures, for example.

Hero: Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia signs voter photo ID into law...

Just in time for the 2014 mid-terms...

Richmond, Va. (AP) — Virginia law will require all voters to have photo IDs beginning next year.

Gov. Bob McDonnell signed a bill Tuesday that his fellow Republicans said was a safeguard against voter fraud. Democrats bitterly denounced the legislation as a Jim Crow-era tactic to suppress the votes of the elderly, minorities and the underprivileged.
The legislation provides for a free valid ID with the bearer’s photo to any registered voter who lacks one.

Along with signing the legislation, McDonnell issued an executive order directing the State Board of Elections to start a public education program to tell voters about the new requirement before the 2014 congressional and U.S. Senate elections.

Amusing: Obama shows ID to vote (Video)

 My favorite video of the day...


Via WFB:

President Barack Obama gave his driver’s license to poll workers Thursday as he voted early in Chicago.

“I’m just glad I renewed my driver’s license,” Obama joked.

Voter I.D. laws, which require citizens to present approved forms of identification in order to vote, have become a point of Democratic objection this year.

MSNBC: Voter ID Laws Suppress Transgender Vote Or Something...

This is a real stretch.

Via Newsbusters:

MSNBC doesn’t just oppose voter-ID reforms on behalf of blacks. In an interview with the DC gay newspaper The Washington Blade, weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry insisted “voter suppression efforts continue to impact transgender Americans.” It came with a lot of leftist lingo.

“They don’t look like what their photo IDs are,” she said. “So if they are self-presenting in front of an election official and they have an ID that says male or female and they’re sort of gender self-presenting in a non-conforming way, of course you end up with the possibility of shame or embarrassment or not being believed to be who you are.” They also don’t have birth certificates with names and gender markers that “are not informative of what their current life is.” Biological truth is an ideological lie:

“All of those things impact the ability of people to have the kind of state-issued ID that is allowable in a lot of these states around voting,” she said. “And so the idea that a person would be a perfectly eligible American citizen who has an opinion about voting and is kept out of it because of those sorts of issues — it goes to the heart of helping us understand that these efforts are really voter suppression efforts, not efforts to keep the election process above board.”

Keep on reading…

Irony: Democrats to require state issued ID to get into Charlotte convention...

From the convention website:(accent is mine)

Please complete the following form regarding your organization’s primary contact information and the authorized designee(s) to whom your 2012 Democratic National Convention credentials can be issued. 

Authorized Pickup 

All pickup persons must have a state-issued ID that matches the name submitted below.

They must be raaaacist!!!!

Wait! You need a photo ID to get into the DNC? Gosh. Could they be more racist? #VoterID
— Andrew A Bair (@ProLifePolitics) September 1, 2012

@eileenleft “@conservative_vw:@trumpetman: Photo ID required to enter DNC. WHAT?Are they trying to keep minorities from participating?
— Kubu (@Kubu_1) September 2, 2012

Good News: Al Sharpton's Work Against Voter ID Laws Is "Non-Partisan"

Is he serious?

Via Newsbusters:

DEBBIE WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: The Democratic party is going to do everything we can to make sure that regardless of whether you speak English or Spanish, regardless of where you live, if you are eligible to vote, and lawfully eligible to vote, we are going to do everything we can to make sure you can cast that ballot. The Republicans are doing everything they can to prevent it.

AL SHARPTON: Now, congresswoman, you know I've spent some time in Florida lately

WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: Yes you did, and thank you for that [giggles]

SHARPTON: -- around voter ID, and it's been non-partisan, not for either party.

Demo Pennsylvania election official to refuse to enforce voter ID law

You can't get on an airplane, buy a pack of smokes, sign up for social security, cash a check, purchase a gun, pick up FedEx mail, enter Eric Holder's Justice Department or a host of other everyday activities without proper identification. I find it incredible that Democrats think it's a burden to ask for a photo ID to vote. I have carried a photo ID every day since I was sixteen. The only people I know who don't carry ID are criminals who don't want cops to know their real name because they have warrants. If there are law-abiding citizens out there without a photo ID, we would be doing them a public service if we expedited them getting one.

Via HuffPo:

A local election official in Pennsylvania announced plans Thursday to defy the state and resist enforcing its newly enacted voter ID law, signed by Gov. Tom Corbett (R) earlier this year.

Christopher Broach, a Democrat who oversees elections in Delaware County, a Keystone State suburb, told thePhiladelphia Inquirer he won’t ask voters to present ID because it’s a violation of their civil rights, implemented “for the sake of getting Mitt Romney elected.”

“To ask me to enforce something that violates civil rights is ludicrous and absolutely something I am not willing to do,” Broach told the outlet in an interview.

Hypocrisy: Eric Holder Speaks About Efforts To Stop Voter ID Laws, NAACP Requires Photo ID To Attend

Pot, meet kettle...

Via Town Hall’s Katie Pavlich:

Earlier today, Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the NAACP Nation Convention at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas. What did media need in order to attend? That’s right, government issued photo identification (and a second form of identification too!), something both Holder and the NAACP stand firmly against when it comes to voting. Holder’s DOJ is currently suing Texas for “discriminatory” voter ID laws. From the press release:

All media must present government-issued photo I.D. (such as a driver’s license) as well as valid media credentials. Members of the media must RSVP to receive press credentials. For security purposes, media check-in and equipment set up must be completed by 7:45 a.m. CDT for an 8:00 a.m. CDT security sweep. Once the security sweep is completed, additional media equipment will NOT be permitted to enter and swept equipment will NOT be permitted to exit.