Thank you for your comment. I would be fine with a voter ID law that was sincere, and not merely a thinly disguised 21st century version of the poll tax. Sen. Warnock of GA summarized it well, and I concur with him: “I don’t know anybody who believes that people shouldn’t have to prove that they are who they say they are. But what has happened over the years is people have played with common sense identification and put into place restrictive measures intended not to preserve the integrity of the outcome, but to select certain voters. That’s what I oppose.”
You seem to blithely dismiss the FTPA’s 68% approval purely on the grounds that the act is complex. Are you saying that the will of the people should apply only for simple, easily understandable legislation?
Likewise, you argue that we should discount that strong level of support purely because the name of the legislation is seductive. Please. As you surely know, virtually all legislation from both parties carries such manipulative, market-ready labels. (I refer you to the USA Patriot Act of 2001, to name just one.) Once again, you seem very ready to reject the will of the people on the grounds that the American people are just too dim to know what they’re doing.
While admitting you haven’t read the legislation in its entirety, you proclaim that “I am able to say with confidence is that it contains more than just provisions that make voting easier.” OK: Please detail for me what provisions it contains to which you object.
Lastly, I share your support for “better access to the polls.” But the whole reason behind the FTPA is the shameless Republican effort nationwide to roll back and restrict the vote in every possible way. If the act is overstuffed, the GOP has shown zero interest in compromise or paring it back to something it finds acceptable…..and there is a reason for that: because there is nothing in the area of protecting voting rights that it finds acceptable. Their entire goal is quite the opposite, to disenfranchise a huge swath of the electorate for their own partisan gain, under the transparently dishonest guise of “securing the vote.” Rather than talking about the alleged overreach of the FTPA, we ought to be discussing this unconscionable and fundamentally un-American crusade by the GOP.
