Last Friday, the Justice Department shot down South Carolina’s voter ID law. Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act requires that certain states obtain pre-clearance from either DOJ or U.S. District Court for changes to voting qualification, a measure designed to prevent scurrilous attempts to disenfranchise black voters. Long after this presumption of bad faith on the part of South Carolinans went from insulting to ridiculous, the Justice Department decided that requiring black voters to present photo IDs would unfairly keep them away from the polls.
This decision was not based on the slightest hint of discriminatory intent, but rather the sheer number of minority voters who would presumably be affected by the new law, measured against what Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez deemed an insufficiently urgent need to prevent voter fraud. South Carolina must now either take the matter to court, or persuade the Justice Department to reconsider.
The law in question was even more lenient than voter ID laws already on the books in other states. Free photo IDs would be made available for those who lack driver’s licenses. There was even a provision for conscientious objectors to photographic identification.
This was, nonetheless, deemed unacceptable because “minority registered voters were nearly 20% more likely to lack DMV-issued ID than white registered voters, and thus to be effectively disenfranchised,” according to Perez.
It’s increasingly difficult to bamboozle voters into tolerating ballot-box hijinks, in a world where millions of humdrum transactions requiring accurate identification are completed without fuss, every single day. The Left deserves a measure of grudging admiration forconvincing Information Age America to hold its elections in 1965, even as they conduct their daily affairs with 21st-century speed and accuracy… especially since those elections are, increasingly, the only real control we have over vast swathes of our nationalized, hyper-regulated lives.
—John Hayward |
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