Editor’s note: This commentary is by Bob Orleck, who is a retired pharmacist and lawyer. He served as an assistant attorney general under Vermont Attorney General Jerome Diamond.
[I] am sure that all have seen issues raised today in our society that if done so years ago would have been laughable and rejected without need of thought or comment because the correctness for doing so was obvious. In today’s world we face issues that defy logic and good common sense. What is right seems wrong now and vice versa to the point where it has become difficult to impossible in the politically correct atmosphere we breathe to stand up for what is right. The logical now is easily rejected without any basis in fact. Radical thought prevails. Checks and balances are no longer considered. Cause and effect is forgotten. Common sense solutions are no longer even considered.
One of those is the need for voter ID. I found this issue so obvious that it was hard to articulate why and I have seen few who have tried. So, without using a lot of study and statistics that can show anything one wants to show, I thought I would give it a go based on just good old common sense.
Voter ID requirements are a no-brainer and Democrats oppose them for one good reason. They know they cannot continue to promote their socialist agenda in a system that functions only with legal votes from legitimate voters. Power hungry politicians want people who are beholden to them to vote fraudulently or not) and they want that because it is the only way they can stay in power. They buy votes with big spending of taxpayer money and then get those (legal and illegal) who do not want to lose those benefits that you and I pay for, to vote for them.
Not requiring a person wanting to vote to identify themselves leads to fraud in many ways and gives them the necessary extra votes they need to hold onto their power. There are people who knowingly vote in more than one jurisdiction. Identity theft is real and so is voting fraud where people claiming to be a deceased person or one who has moved and who has not been removed from the voter rolls, claims to be that person and votes. Only IDing voters can stop that because the official voter lists will always be lacking in removing the deceased and ineligible that have moved. The lists are only as good as the clerks who maintain them and the information they received about the voter and that will vary all over the board.
Specious arguments are put forth that voter ID requirements suppress voter turnout and disenfranchise certain groups of people. To the contrary, it has been shown in fact that where there is a voter ID requirement the voting numbers of minorities is even higher than where not required. No ID required voting is to enable those not entitled to vote or who want to vote claiming to be someone they are not. No one would think that people are trying to suppress minorities from flying by insisting on a government-issued photo ID to do that. What about when cashing a check or getting a passport? So many things require identification so why is it wrong to make someone identify themselves when they vote? This is so simple that only an idiot or one wanting fraud would oppose identifying a person who is claiming a right to vote.
We must take the road of common sense and reality and make it universal that to vote you have to show you are who you claim to be. To do otherwise gives cover to those who would undermine the democratic process creating enough illegal votes to maintain their power.
It is easy to identify the political party that wants this kind of fraud for their candidates. All you have to do is look at the party that is advocating for no ID and you will see the party that benefits. The Republican Party wants voter ID in place everywhere to reduce fraud, not to keep eligible voters away from the polls. It is the Democrats that want anyone to vote anytime, anywhere and as often as possible. It is the only way they can maintain their stranglehold on American politics. Because we let them they are doing a good job of it too!
There is definitely a split in America ideologically although I cannot understand how so many people can be fooled by those spewing liberal-progressive ideology. In such a setting even a small amount of fraud can affect an election. When someone who is unnamed and unidentified votes illegally, it is very difficult after the fact to prove this happened and to what degree. There is no trail and no one or no group has the ability to follow up on each vote everywhere to see if in fact the person listed was the person actually voting. One can only imagine the large amount of fraud that actually occurs but even if it is a small number, that number can and does in many elections make the final difference in who gets seated in that office.
There can be little doubt or valid counterargument that fraud occurs when people are permitted to vote without proving who they are by valid ID and there can be no doubt that such a system creates a perception of pervasive fraud. This damages the confidence people have in American democracy, something that once was never questioned and was the example for the world. Weakening the confidence of people causes good people to just not vote because they believe the game is fixed. Throughout the world fraudulent elections have led to democratic breakdowns allowing dictatorships to happen. Not identifying those voting is the easy way for this to happen. America is not immune from this cause and effect. Why is this happening? There are so many of us who are in denial about this and coincidentally most such are Democrats, even well-meaning ones. Audits have proven voter fraud is happening but because there is this denial and because after the fact of voting a person who has not identified themselves is difficult to discover and prosecute the problem persists. Just study the Al Franken election results and it is easy to see that even a small amount of such fraud puts people like Franken in office.
Voter ID laws are common sense. They keep people who should not be voting from voting. The reason for the necessity is so clear that one should not have to argue the point. Only those who want the illegal vote would be glad that attempts to purge official voter lists of illegal aliens and others ineligible to vote failed. That is exactly what happened in swing state North Carolina. There was expressed glee in Democrat circles when a judge did just that.
So don’t be deceived by the rhetoric that voter ID laws disenfranchise certain people. No doubt the corrupt politicians will argue that point but it is the vast majority of non-thinking, non-challenging citizens who permit them to do so. We must take the road of common sense and reality and make it universal that to vote you have to show you are who you claim to be. To do otherwise gives cover to those who would undermine the democratic process creating enough illegal votes to maintain their power. This failure on our part to check the deceivers is destroying confidence in American democracy and such actions will lead to dictatorships.
We should not be surprised when we see people being elected who hold to radical ideas and their implementation even though they run counter to the great majority of citizens. The combination of eligible voter apathy coupled with intense efforts of these radical politicians to get their vote out side by side with the necessary amount of fraud created by systems that do not require voter ID, makes it happen. Until we get a handle on this situation by requiring all voters to properly ID themselves, we will have in office those people who have stolen the election.
All political parties should fight for a system that insures voting happens only by those eligible to cast a ballot. If both Republicans, Democrats and all other parties worked together to do that, they could then duke it out over the issues with their selected standard bearers and let the legitimate voting citizen decide who wins. Universal voter ID requirement is all that is needed to make it happen now.
How sad it all is that the fix is so easy to do yet so impossible to do. Airlines and banks require valid ID when someone wants to fly or cash a check and that makes sense to everyone. The same logic should fit in the exercise of our right to vote in a fair and free election. It is a no-brainer.
