Mr. Speaker, I’d like to tell you a little bit about my grandmother, Daisy Nash Whitfield. She was born on Valentine’s Day in 1905. She was from a small town called Newellton, Louisiana. The population is 1,200 and it’s about 100 miles north of Baton Rouge.
If she were still alive, she’d be 107 this year. But of course she isn’t alive, she died back in 1959, a day before my mother’s 13th birthday. I’m telling you this story because, if she were still alive today, she might not be able to find her birth certificate. And under this bill, she wouldn’t be able to vote!
A photo voter ID requirement would disenfranchise many of the 250,000 legally registered Missouri voters – mostly racial minorities, the poor, the disabled and the elderly – who don’t currently have a government-issued photo ID.
Republicans argue that a photo ID is required to do many things – rent a car, get on a plane and so on – that aren’t nearly as important as voting. This argument ignores an important point: None of those things is a constitutional right; voting is.
This bill is about only one thing: suppressing the vote of disadvantaged groups that tend to vote for Democrats.
As of this moment, House Bill 1104 is unconstitutional under the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling in Weinschenk v. Missouri (2006) . In that case, the court ruled the General Assembly lacks the authority to impose additional requirements on the right to vote other than those enumerated in the Missouri Constitution.
Last year the General Assembly approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would grant lawmakers the authority to impose a photo voter ID requirement, but that amendment won’t go on the ballot until November.
Until and unless voters ratify a constitutional change, it is premature for the General Assembly to pass legislation exercising authority that it doesn’t possess.
Requiring voters to produce a photo ID at the polls as a condition of casting a ballot seeks to solve a nonexistent problem by disenfranchising thousands of Missouri voters.
State Rep. Tishaura O. Jones have this speech against House Bill 1104 on the floor of the Missouri House of Representatives.
