You can't get on airplane, get a job, open a bank account or rent a movie in this country without a photo ID. Yet requiring one to vote is "disenfranchising minority voters"? Does privileged white woman Lithwick really have that low of an opinion of minorities that she thinks they are too stupid and too outside the mainstream to even rent a movie? Is she really that big of a racist? This article is just another example of why Lithwick's work is beneath Slate or anything written a level above that of the second grade. How does this woman keep her job?

Ok, I'm hoping you live in a small and everyone you know owns a car so you just don't realize that many, many people do not have driver's licenses or photo ID, and they're not all black. It's not that folks with no photo ID are stupid and "too outside the mainstream to even rent a movie" -- it's that they just are. Perhaps you should make a driving tour of the South. Or perhaps you should study the Constitution and the history of the poll tax law. It is precisely issues like photo ID that are used to discriminate against the poor. And black people are disproportionately among the poor.

Let's say your wallet got stolen right before the election. Does that mean you lose your right to vote? Simply registering with your signature, and having the signature compared at your voting location, ought to be enough. It's illegal to force voters to jump through hoops to exercise their right to vote, for good reasons.

"many people do not have driver's licenses or photo ID"

If those people want to drink, they get an ID.

Or are you going to say that we are keeping the poor from getting alcohol too?

Ahahaha.

You are mentally ill.

Simply removing your argument and only keeping this:

"It's illegal to force voters to jump through hoops to exercise their right to vote, for good reasons."

would have been sufficient to demonstrate your point. There's no need to bring out race, color, or creed.

Taken out of the context of a documented, orchestrated effort to trim voter rolls of known Democratic voters, your concerns might hold more water. But alas...

"to trim voter rolls of known Democratic voters"

By "known Democratic voters" the above poster means the recently deceased, the imaginary, illegal immigrants, and Democrats who vote multiple times in different sections.

And yes, I believe they should be trimmed, regardless if they are registered as "Democrat" or not.

You may be right that that statement is self-sustaining. However, the reason that race is relevant here is that efforts to require photo ID's have a history of being intentionally targeted at suppressing the votes of African Americans. Thus, Isonomist was putting the issue in context with the motives of VonSpakovky and others.

Absolutely. What's particularly irritating about Lithwick is that she recently, in the last year or so, crossed the Rubicon and entered the land of nutjobs. She really believes that everyone in the administration is evil and all their actions are (somehow) simultaneously corrupt and ideological.

Thus, a government effort to stop abuses of our democratic process must necessarily be a sign of racism by everyone involved. And, even with the highly publicized messes that recent elections have become, anyone who tries to regularize the voting process must necessarily have no motive other than denying his neighbors their civil rights.

She's a complete nutcase.

This guilt-by-association thing is crap. It's also objectively true that abortions have a history of being selectively inflicted in the name of eugenics and male dominance. The "pro-life" crowd routinely runs out this history to attack abortion rights. The fact that someone can document that two things happened together at some point somewhere is really not that impressive.

So, in short, you are being intellectually disingenuous when you say "the reason that race is relevant is...a history of being targeted at suppressing votes." Because, no, I reject that the history has any bearing on attempting to get people to show the same photo ID they have to show to:

drive, smoke, drink, work, bank, rent, attend events, attend classes, cross borders...

Really, why does it have to be racist to say that you also need the same ID to vote? You can't just assert that it is. I say it objectively isn't because it modern America a black man has exactly the same access to a photo ID as a white man, period, everywhere. Period. Prove otherwise to me!!

"have a history of being intentionally targeted at suppressing the votes of African Americans."

Please show where African American women were turned away from the polls.

You can't.

Therefore, you must say it as it is, felons.

Dahlia Lithwick is consistently the very best thing about Slate. Her analyses are vigorous, clear-headed, thorough and her writing is excellent. She makes no unfounded assertions, and her focus on the id law is comparable to an earlier generation of jurists' focus on literacy tests. I hope her colleagues at Slate overlook these troll comments.

The barring of voters using methods like ID, literacy tests and poll taxes are historically meant to bar black voters. Take a look at the 24th amendment:

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and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Clearly the law in any state, since Reconstruction has not on its face appeared to discriminate (or violate the 15th amendment), but the laws themselves were used in a discriminatory fashion by the southern states to exclude black voters. This is a matter of history, and a synopsis is available on the DOJ web site if you're really interested in why the voter ID issue is or can be a racial one.

Ahahahahaha.

Mmiddle, tell me, you are being sarcastic, right? Even Dahlia admitted that she was one of the most biased people on staff.

That's how they get away with violating the 15th amendment. You make a law that looks like it says everyone has to do X to vote. Then you only apply it where black voters vote. It's been going on since Reconstruction. The issue isn't that it "has" to be racist, only that it has historicaclly been applied in a racist fashion.

The Dept. of Justice's own web site

<link>

are you saying they're lying about how these laws were applied?