That Funny Leftist Equation about Voter I.D.

I know it’s kind of a blase issue now that the 2012 elections are over, but I felt the urge to write on the topic of voter I.D. after seeing a Facebook friend writing something about voter suppression in a status update. For those unfamiliar with the left’s equation for voter I.D. requirements, it goes like this : voter I.D. = voter suppression = RACISM! Yet, oddly enough, those who cry about this the most on the left don’t seem to realize that they come perilously close to racism by making the blanket assumption that all people they believe that would be affected by voter I.D., namely people of color and people on the lower ends of the socioeconomic scale, are completely unable to find the smallish amounts of money and time it takes to get some form of valid identification.

But I digress.

As one Internet meme that sprung up in the months leading up to the election pointed out, ID is required to vote in Mexico. I mean, heck, even PBS wrote about this fact in July of this year. I did some (admittedly minimal) research to try and find out what other countries might require ID in order to vote in order to protect the integrity of elections. I found out that in Northern Ireland in the UK, ID is required to vote. Along with that little tidbit, it appears Argentina, Sri Lanka, Estonia, Israel, South Africa, and Uruguay all require identification in order to vote.

What was even more interesting, at least in my mind, were the responses I got from two friends on Twitter. The person with the duck avatar you’ll see below lives in Germany, while the person with the My Little Pony avatar resides in Italy.

First, my German friend:

I like how she used “of course”, like it’s perfectly normal and logical to understand that when a person goes to vote, it should be clear to all that person is exactly who they say they are. Again, not sure why this is such a difficult issue for the professional left of academia and media to understand here in the U.S., but so it goes, I suppose.

And here’s the response from my Italian friend:

So in two European countries typically considered more liberal and libertine than the United States, the necessity of identification for voting seems well understood. But, here in the United States, you would hardly know that the rest of the world sees voter ID as a common sense precaution to maintain election integrity. Instead, you get cries of “JIM CROW REBORN!” , “RACISM!”, and “DISENFRANCHISEMENT!”

When election time ramps up in two years again, and when this fun little subject comes back to the forefront of the left’s collective psyche, just make sure to remind them that numerous countries around the world require ID to vote. And then, the fun, part… Ask them:

So, are all those countries RACIST?!