Identity Hypocrites

Get on an airplane.

Work at a government job.

Enter a government building.

Open a checking, savings, brokerage, or retirement account.

Apply for a credit card, loan, or mortgage.

Apply for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Welfare, food stamps, or other government assistance.

Apply for a driver's license.

Get legally married.

Buy alcohol, or tobacco, firearms, a cell phone, prescription drugs, a house, a car, auto insurance, an "M" rated video game, or anything containing pseudoephedrine.

Rent an apartment, a hotel room, or a car.

Get electricity, natural gas, or water/sewer service at your home.

Sell anything at a pawn shop.

Adopt a child or a pet.

Enter a casino.

Apply for a professional license.

Volunteer at a non-profit organization.

Stage a gathering on public land.

Get a hunting or fishing permit.

Donate blood.

What do all these things have in common?

They all require you produce some form of identification.

A libertarian would go through this list and eliminate many or most of these requirements, or ensure they are strictly those of a private entity rather than government mandated.

However, the people in our society who argue most vehemently against voter identification requirements seem to be pretty OK with all these identification requirements (and more).

Simultaneously, they oppose and get shrill over the libertarians' remedy to the voter fraud issue: cleaning up voter rolls prior to elections.

All this is wrapped up in high dudgeon regarding the inherent racism of voter integrity laws passed by Republicans, notably the Georgia law that prompted Major League Baseball to relocate the All Star game to Denver (FTR, Atlanta is 51% black, Denver is 9% black. All Star Games are considered a boon for the local economy. Draw your own conclusions). The Right produced a rebuttal that claimed voter laws in such Democratic bastions as New York and New Jersey had more restrictive voting laws than the new Georgia law, a claim that Politifact deftly danced around by introducing its own narrative about "trends," in addition to a point-by-point comparison. In other words, New York gets props for planning to make things looser, because it's a given that progressives are not racist and everyone else is.

The Democrats, shifting gears after the epic failure to enact their Build Back Better boondoggle, are now scheming to ram a Trojan Horse of a voting rights bill down our throats, by hook or by crook.

Meanwhile, our better-than-thou progressives are imposing proof-of-vaccination mandates (will they require ID to go with those handwritten vaccination cards, I wonder?) for simply going into a restaurant or entertainment venue.

What about all the other things that we who prioritize liberty would liberate from government's clutches? As a parallel, consider the "My Body, My Choice!" mantra of the Left.

Do they mean it?

Of course not, not in any way that doesn't start with abor- and end in -tion. I covered that hypocrisy two years ago.

Our voting system should be easy, but it should also be trustworthy and highly resistant to partisan gamesmanship. If it isn't, we will have endless repeats of this past winter's debacle, with every close-call loser riling up acolytes with claims of fraud and election-theft.

Want to ensure that doesn't happen? Ensure the system that has integrity, instead of one that simply makes it easier for your team to work it to advantage. Clean the voter rolls of dead and duplicates. Get a registration system going that's trustworthy. Create a voter ID card that those without other IDs can use, and make it easy to get but tough to cheat. And, for pity's sake, give people some credit. Tell them that, if they want to vote, they need to do an easy A, B, and C, and tell those who are too lazy to bother, "sorry, but you can do it next time." Citizenship does bear some degree of responsibility, no?

Finally, stop looking at the voting system from a "benefit my party" perspective. Show some fucking integrity of your own.

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A version of this post first appeared at The Roots of Liberty.