A few days ago, the solution to America’s crazy voting rights conflict arrived in the mail. A passport card.
Our big voting problem is that the U.S. has no database of citizens and no form of voter ID, or any type of valid ID, national or state. Like millions of others, Publius got a U.S. driver’s license immediately by handing over a foreign one. No questions asked. Also, like millions, he got his Social Security card years before moving here. Again, no questions asked. Because both forms of ID are completely useless, he could have lived in the U.S., paid taxes, travelled and returned for decades without anyone asking a single question about his right to live and work here.
So, there is no way to prove you are who you are when you vote.
Nor prove who you are to anyone else. The police, for example, cannot ask most people to show the right to live and work in the U.S. because only resident aliens and passport holders can do this. And the passport holders only if they are carrying their passports with them.
That means that 63% of Americans—those with no valid passport—have no way to show that they have the right to live and work here, let alone to vote. And, of the 37% with passports, almost none carry them around to show on demand to the cops, employers, or anyone else. Voter suppression is easy.
In spite of this obvious and well-known problem, Trumpistas are demanding in-person voting with voter ID. Like everything else in Dumb Don’s flakey space, this makes no sense. To even think about this (something Trumpistas cannot do) we must first have a system of national ID.
And getting our national ID has to be cheap and easy-to-do.
Passport cards are both. They cost $65 for first-time applicants, last a decade and cost $30 to renew for another decade. For anyone who can’t afford a card, arrange a subsidy.
With the card came a simple notice that the card itself has no data, just the electronic ability to connect to a federal database which signals that the holder is a legitimate citizen.
The lights went on.
Not only is the passport card secure, but it can be scanned for all forms of voting, in-person or otherwise. In other words, the passport card can increase voter participation and strengthen our increasingly weak democracy.
But, expect Trumptistas to scream and shout that they are opposed to valid ID but to demand valid ID for voting.
Hmmm...
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