Voter ID law proposed...again
On Thursday, a member of the Missouri House proposed a constitutional amendment that would authorize the General Assembly to pass legislation that would require would-be voters to show government-issued idenitification to prove that they are legal citizens before they can vote in a public election.
The measure is sponsored by Rep. Stanley Cox, R-Sedailia, who sponsored similiar legislation in the last session. That bill passed in the both the House and Senate, mostly along party lines, with Republicans generally in support of the measure. However, the legislation stalled before the end of the session, and thus was not passed into law.
The year before that, Rep. Brian Yates, R-Lee's Summit, proposed a bill that would have required the same type of identification to be displayed at the polls, but would have enlisted the state government to shoulder the cost of providing one form of official identification with no charge to the voter. That bill never left the House.