Editorial: Please, no Mo. voter ID
April 29, 2008
We’ve heard every argument against the voter identification law in Indiana, which was recently reaffirmed in a positive decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. We agree with most of them — they’re an updated form of a poll tax, it’s just another obstacle to make it even less likely for people to vote and it will keep diverse groups of people out of the voting booth because of unnecessarily difficult requirements. We hope to never see a resurgence of support for a similar act in Missouri, which isn’t completely out of the question — one was passed in 2006 but was struck down before the election that year.
Most of the reactions to the act that we’ve heard are based in the constitution, but there are plenty of more practical reasons, relating directly to students, which should be argument enough that such a requirement would be egregious and unfair. Plenty of students don’t have jobs during college and therefore would have no reason to have their social security cards or passports with them in their college residence. They’d have to find means that aren’t the postal service to get reunited with their important documents, which is a hassle, honestly, most students would not be willing to endure in order to vote. And even so, most students would not be willing to give up their state’s ID in order to get a Missouri one, as the previous act required - many insurance companies require an ID from whatever state a student’s family is based in order to remain on family insurance plans, for example. And finally, we know so many students with fake IDs that requiring a “government issued” ID seems like it would not actually achieve any lasting solutions to voter fraud.
So we hope the Missouri General Assembly does not see fit to reintroduce a bill like this after the most recent example out of Indiana. Just because one state does it doesn’t mean that every state should.
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