Voter suppression charges hard to take seriously

For even any supposedly "nonpartisan" government office like the Government Accountability Office to suggest that Tennessee's voter ID law suppressed the vote in 2012 in any measurable way is patently ridiculous.

To be able to accurately say that's true, the motivation of every voter who went to the polls in 2008 but didn't go in 2012 in the Volunteer State and any other state to which it was compared would have to be examined. Clearly, it was not.

Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett is mad about a recently released GAO study that alleges that, and he has a right to be.

He points out, for instance, that the four other states to which Tennessee was compared had "hot button" issues or races in 2012 that drew voters and Tennessee did not. He also notes that Democrats repudiated their 2012 candidate for U.S. Senate, anti-gay rights activist Mark Clayton, so many voters were likely to stay home.

Voters have 10,000 other reasons why they did or didn't vote one year and did or didn't vote the next.

Hargett also had questions about the data in the study supplied by Catalist, an organization founded in 2006 with seed money from far left billionaire and Democrat super funder George Soros and whose president is former Clinton White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes.

His seven-page letter to the GAO, following the preliminary findings that were shared with the state, charge the data organization is "biased against the photo-ID law."

The voter file that was used by Catalist, Hargett says, came from the Tennessee Democratic Party and not the Tennessee Secretary of State's office.

The study alleges the voter ID law caused the turnout in the Volunteer State to be especially smaller for groups such as blacks and young voters.

However, while black turnout across the country increased 1.5 percent from 2008 to 2012, turnout of young voters ages 18-29 fell 1.8 million between 2008 and 2012.

To lump those two groups with disparate national results together and say the voter ID law in a particular state made a difference is not logical.

No one seemed to have a problem, though, in Georgia in 2008 when the Peach State and Indiana had the strictest photo ID voter requirements in the country. Ahead of the election, the ACLU, the NAACP and other groups claimed the law was intended to depress black turnout.

Yet, according to information by Curtis Gans at American University, Georgia had the largest turnout in its history with nearly 3 million voters. While Republican turnout was up only .22 percentage points, turnout for Democrats -- home to the overwhelming majority of black voters -- rose 6.1 percent.

The state's overall turnout was up 6.7 percent from the 2004 election, the second highest turnout increase of any state in the country. The share of the black vote increased from 25 percent in 2004, when the photo ID law was not in effect, to 30 percent in 2008, when it was in effect.

A former member of the Congressional Black Caucus is also convinced that voter ID laws are not racist in intent.

Artur Davis, who represented Alabama's 7th Congressional District from 2003 to 2011, used to think they were, according to a Heritage Foundation article in 2011.

Alabama, he said in a commentary in the Montgomery Advertiser, "did the right thing" in passing a voter ID law and admits, "I wish I had gotten it right when I was in political office."

However, he said, he just "took the path of least resistance" in opposing the law without evidence to justify his stance. He simply "lapsed into the rhetoric of various partisans and activists who contend that requiring photo identification to vote is a suppression tactic aimed at thwarting black voter participation."

Away from the voting precinct, all of us are asked for our IDs every day. Almost every driver's license has a photo. Passports have them. Federal and state governments issue them. Military personnel have them. They also may be found on state handgun carry permits.

If you don't have one, the government will issue you one in order to vote.

And you don't have to have one if you vote by mail (what could be easier?), if you're a resident of a nursing home or assisted living facility and vote there, if you're hospitalized, if you have a religious objection to being photographed or if you're indigent and unable to get a photo ID without paying a fee.

The state has made having and obtaining an ID as easy as possible.

Voter suppression in Tennessee, based on a report offered by a Democratic federal government using an organization led by Democrats with data from the Tennessee Democratic Party? Come on!

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