Voter ID a Proud Symbol of Freedom for Afghans

 

IBDEditorials.com

Democracy: About 7 million Afghans turned out to vote in Saturday's presidential election, many proudly brandishing a photo ID that our Department of Justice claims is a symbol of racism and voter intimidation.

In perhaps the most ironic tweet of all time, former Obama adviser David Axelrod noted concerning Saturday's presidential election in Afghanistan: "Afghans defied threat of death to vote. Here's hoping that Americans vote in large (numbers) this fall, despite efforts to make voting harder."

Axelrod may not have noticed, but millions of Afghans also defied the threat of death when they lined up earlier to obtain the same photo voter IDs they could carry as they voted in an election that will produce the first peaceful transition of power in that beleaguered nation's history. Afghans proudly showed their photo voter IDs, just as President Obama did when he voted early in Chicago in the 2012 election.

If people in some countries, as Axelrod notes, will risk death to vote, it is hard to see the intimidation in requiring people who vote to prove they are who they say they are — especially when voting results in America show that minority voters turned out in greater numbers in states that adopted voter ID requirements.

When Georgia passed a voter-ID requirement before the 2008 election, critics claimed it would suppress black and Hispanic votes and lead to a new Jim Crow era. However, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported afterward: "Election data reviewed by the AJC show that participation among black voters rose by 44% from 2006 — before the law was implemented — to 2010. For Hispanics, the increase for the same period was 67%. Turnout among whites rose 12%."

In Georgia, black voter turnout for the midterm election in 2006 was 42.9%. It rose to 50.4% in the 2010 midterm. Black turnout also rose in Indiana and Mississippi after photo IDs were required.

Still, the Justice Department of Attorney General Eric Holder, the same bunch that dropped the case of a group of New Black Panthers wearing military garb and carrying billy clubs as they stood outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008, looks for racism where there is none, suing state after state for merely wanting to keep elections fair and honest.

The U.S. Supreme Court has already upheld the constitutionality of requiring voter IDs.

"There is no question about the legitimacy or importance of a state's interest in counting only eligible voters' votes," wrote liberal Justice John Paul Stevens for the 6-3 majority in the high court's 2008 decision.

In a bit of unintended irony this weekend, Obama congratulated "the millions of Afghans who enthusiastically participated in today's historic elections."

We also celebrate the Afghan election in which millions dodged bullets to cast ballots made fair and honest through the use of photo voter IDs.