Vote Fraud

Amanda Terkel comments on the real voter fraud, which the ID laws don't touch, and a concise discussion of the ID laws and what their effect is going to be if the Supreme Court, as expected, supports the Indiana voter ID law.

Keep in mind that the Indiana law is only one facet of a nationwide Republican effort, led by the Republican Party's Department of Justice, to crack down on nonexistent "vote fraud" cases while ignoring corruption among office holders. The real fraud has been in the lack of paper trails from electronic voting machines, questionable counting procedures, placement of voting machines, hiding polling places, understaffing -- all things that will discourage working people from voting.

It occurs to me that the right to vote is one of those rights, like habeas corpus, that conservatives find questionable, especially the "strict constructionists" on the Court. After all, it's not mentioned specifically in the Constitution, so by their thinking, it doesn't exist. (Actually, I sort of take that back. Paragraph 2 of Article I says that Representatives shall be "chosen every second Year by the People of the several States," although it doesn't specify a direct vote. Amendment XIV, however, does specifically refer to the "right to vote." So it is in the Constitution. Sort of.)