Federal judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos – on a mission to “persist” perhaps – ruled last week that Texas’ voter ID law not only discriminates against minorities and/or the poor and/or the “disenfranchised” – but does so intentionally. That the judge was appointed by former President Barack Obama probably has nothing at all to do with her myopic legal views or her contrived and misguided ruling.
It’s unfortunate that ideologically driven judicial rulings attempting to satisfy a political agenda continue to remain obstructions to justice and the expressed will of the people. For the past ten years, voters elected Republicans to both houses of the Texas Legislature and U.S. Congress by large margins as the means of achieving a very specific set of policy ideas and agenda items – one of which was implementing voter ID at the ballot box. Those legislators have gone to Austin and Washington, D.C. as representatives of the people who elected them and who hold them to their promises to carry out the badly needed reforms to ensure ballot integrity for all.
In Texas, the fact is that there are seven forms of photo identification (from drivers licenses to Concealed Handgun Licenses) that can be used to verify identity before casting a vote in the state of Texas, one of which – a fact that seems to escape all discussion of the issue in the media – is an “election identification certificate” which the state provides for free. Even if there are questions with regard to ID at the election location, a voter can cast a provisional ballot, allowing his vote to be cast and counted, providing he provide verified ID before the deadline.
The linchpin of the American system of self-government is the integrity of the ballot box – the legitimacy of elections are crucial to the validity of the resulting governance – . Take away the legitimacy and you take away the trust – the confidence that people feel they are being governed justly, and with their best interests in mind. Texans – and all Americans – have a right to elections free from the taint and specter of fraud.
The Left is militantly and violently opposed to any electoral outcome that impedes its agenda (see the recent protests at Berkeley) – regardless of legitimacy. It is in their interest to manufacture as much confusion and obfuscation as possible at the ballot box – the better to steal elections, or to sow discord afterwards. The Left is not interested in ensuring ballot integrity – far from it. Thus, they object to any plan or mechanism that interferes with fraud and abuse – including having to show ID, which ensures that no one is able to cast someone else’s vote, and that those who vote do so legally.
American citizens – and especially Texans, who have a long and well-known history built upon a foundation of fighting against tyranny – are entitled to common-sense photo ID standards that are held universally in both government and the private sector. This misguided, destructive and clearly partisan ruling must and should be overturned. Allowing it to stand, holding Texans hostage yet again before elections are conducted is detrimental to democracy and a betrayal of the promise of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
That is just un-American.
