Your papers please
When [Ohio] Gov. Mike DeWine last week signed what’s been called the nation’s strictest voter ID law, it raised fears that it would disenfranchise large numbers of voters in poor communities where people are less likely to meet the new requirements.
Why? Because strict ID is not wealth-neutral.
Those fears seem to be supported by a September report that estimates 1 million Ohioans have suspended licenses because of debts from things such as a lack of insurance, unpaid fines, and court costs. That’s in a state with 8 million registered voters.
The analysis, by the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, said the suspensions by far fall most heavily on impoverished urban communities of color. In other words, debt-related suspensions disproportionately affect some of the communities least likely to vote for the Republican officials who passed and signed the voter ID law.
It’s a nice little racket. You want laws that protect rich people at the expense of poor people? Simple: make it harder for poor people to vote.
“There is absolutely no evidence that we need a voter ID law to prevent voter fraud,” said Colin Marozzi, deputy policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, which opposes the law.
Even so, the voter ID law, House Bill 458, makes it considerably harder for many of the poorest to vote in Ohio. While voters previously could use documents such as bank statements and utility bills to establish their identity, they now must have a driver’s license, state ID, passport or military ID to cast a vote.
Not education-based ID though. That won’t work.
Perhaps tellingly, college, and university IDs didn’t make the list of acceptable IDs approved by Ohio’s heavily gerrymandered Republican legislature. College students were credited with helping to deliver victories to Democrats in key races around the country in the November election.
Suppress that vote.
Yeah, but the ACLU thinks boys can be girls, and men can be women, so their word doesn’t really mean much anymore. What can you say if Republicans respond in this way? Nothing. Squandering your reputation defending the impossible is going to reduce your standing and credibility in important cases like this one. Chase Strangio does nothing to help your organization. She needs to be fired, and ACLU support for trans demands against the rights of girls and women dropped. Until you do those things, how can anyone believe anything you state or claim at this point?
I was going to comment that it was good to see the ACLU back to business, but then I read YNNB’s comment above, and yeah, their credibility is in tatters. Fire Strangio tomorrow, and it will still take years to rebuild confidence in the organisation.
Ohio has almost 12 million people, 8 million who are registered to vote, which is about the national average, but roughly 10-12% of the population has a suspended license? I find that number surprising if true.