State senator
A popular political ploy which has been dusted off in recent years is to simply tell the same lie long enough and hope people will start to believe it. Sen. President Pro-Tem Mike Gibbons has perfected the practice. His op-ed piece in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on March 16 drones on and on about the innocent merits of SB 1014, a Republican piece of legislation which prominently features a section prohibiting every Missourian from voting unless they have a photo ID.
I like Mike Gibbons; he’s my friend, but he is applying a bucket of yellow paint to a chipped brick and trying to pass it off as gold bullion. He opines about voting privilege and the endangered sanctity of the ballot, and then trumpets that the God Almighty Golden Rule Answer to This Most Egregious Threat is this piece of tripe the GOP laughingly calls the Voter Protection Act. With protection like this, I’d hate to see their offensives.
Because this bill IS offensive. It is designed to make voting more difficult for some 170,000-190,000 Missourians, especially the elderly, the poor, minorities and the disabled. It is easy for you and I to be inclined to pass off the requirement that we have a photo ID as just going “a step further,” as Gibbons suggested. For many Missourians, that step is a country mile. The method by which these photo IDs would be made available would create hardships for many Missourians, from rural areas to inner cities.
The GOP plan would be to send mobile units throughout the state, to nursing homes and veteran homes and other locales, to take the pictures, Gibbons noted. Unfortunately, the legislation calls for ONE van. That’s right, ONE. This speedy van would have to traverse the entire state and find every citizen without a photo ID who wanted to vote within a time frame of from the end of August to the November election. I understand Mario Andretti has signed on as the driver.
The Republican monotone on this bill also speaks of its importance in preventing voter fraud. “Voter fraud is rampant in Missouri,” Gibbons said. Bull. He cited some numbers from an auditor’s report taken completely out of context and conjured up more numbers like 1,500 fraudulent ballots in the St. Louis area and 14 people who voted after being dead. There is no record of conviction of a single person who has falsified their identification in order to vote in Missouri in recent history.
The problems Missouri has had in regard to voting have been registration issues, and requiring photo IDs to vote does not address that. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan is addressing registration problems by implementing a statewide voter registration database with assistance from federal funding. Democrats address REAL problems; we don’t develop a solution then search for a problem.
Gibbons is appalled that in November of last year the Department of Justice sued Missouri for – in his words – “having some of the worst voter registration records in the country.” Miss Carnahan had been in office less than 10 months. Do you remember who had been in charge of Missouri elections for the previous four years? Does the name Matt Blunt ring a bell?
Let’s cut to the chase. The breakneck speed with which the GOP is trying to alter voting law is indicative of how desperate they have become. Senator Jim Talent is trailing Claire McCaskill in the polls, and Democrats are poised to make major gains in both the state House and Senate this year. They have to do something to change the course, but we will not stand by and let them plot their political future at the expense of some of our most vulnerable voters.
They love to trot out the federal Carter-Baker Report on improving elections as an ally. They cherry-pick portions they like and disregard the rest. Case in point: The report recommended a six-year phase-in for requiring photo IDs – not 60 days.
We should treasure our voting rights. Election reform should always seek to ensure that every eligible voter is able to do so, and we should make the voting experience as easy and agreeable as possible while guarding against any wrongdoing. SB 1014 does not adhere to that basic principle, no matter how monotonously often GOP leaders say it does.
