Letter: Broad support for voter photo ID
With eight votes separating the winner of the Iowa caucus from the runner-up, the importance of upholding the integrity of the election process is strongly underscored.
Thirty-one states require some form of identification when casting a ballot. Unfortunately, New York is not one of them.
Contrary to what Daniel Altschuler writes ["Lessons for 2012 in 2011 Suffolk vote," Opinion, Jan. 3], voter ID laws have not been found to "almost certainly disenfranchise voters of color." Georgia, which enacted a photo ID law before the 2008 election, saw voter turnout increase. According to the Census Bureau, 65 percent of the black voting-age population in Georgia voted in the 2008 election, compared with only 54.4 percent in 2004. To address potential voter disenfranchisement, Georgia, like many other states requiring verification of identity, offers free state-issued ID.
Although very inconvenient for progressives, such as Altschuler, voter fraud does occur. Just recently, upstate in Troy, two Democratic officials and two political operatives entered guilty pleas in a case in which numerous unsuspecting voters had their signatures forged on absentee ballots in the 2009 primary on the Working Families Party line. One of the Democratic operatives, Anthony DeFiglio, actually told investigators that faking absentee ballots was a common practice in political circles.
Even former liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens agrees that voter fraud does take place, and the problem should not be ignored. He wrote in 2008, upholding Indiana's law requiring citizens to show identification before casting a ballot, that flagrant examples of voter fraud have been documented, and that the risk of voter fraud is real and could affect the outcome of an election. Not surprisingly, according to a recent Rasmussen poll, 75 percent of likely voters believe that a photo ID should be a requirement for voting.
Unfortunately, the nation's chief law enforcement officer, Eric Holder, does not agree and selectively enforces voter rights. He refused to prosecute members of the new Black Panther Party who were threatening violence against white voters in Pennsylvania. However, his office is blocking South Carolina's new photo ID voter law, claiming that it would discriminate against minorities and the poor. Perhaps our attorney general, along with Altschuler, is unaware that the requirement of a photo ID is ubiquitous. It is required to drive a car, to enter federal buildings, to open a bank account, to get on an airplane, to obtain welfare, to buy alcohol and cigarettes. The list could go on. To exclude voting from this list is inconceivable.
Margaret Read Federico, Massapequa
