Arguments Against Voter ID Laws

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Voter ID laws have been fending off attacks from voter protection groups and civil rights leaders since their creation as convenient replacements for poll taxes and literacy tests, because they’re mechanisms to keep minorities out of voting booths. Blacks, Hispanics, senior citizens, people with disabilities and the poor are more likely than other groups of voters to lack a photo ID valid enough to qualify to vote with these proposed pieces of legislation. Other groups, like students whose student ID’s are deemed unacceptable, voters who forget their IDs, people with expired drivers licenses, people whose drivers licenses don’t reflect their current addresses, and recently married women whose IDs don’t reflect changes of surnames would also be turned away in significant numbers.…show more content…
A system of only opening polls between the hours of 7 am to 7 pm, on one weekday keeps a disturbing number of voters away. Take a single mother, reliant on public transportation working even one -notwithstanding the voters in this camp with two or three part time jobs- with kids to take to daycare. It isn’t practical to expect this type of voter to be able to vote as is. This suits those in power just fine, because it’s a form of voter suppression that will prevent these types of voters from voicing their opinions. Laws are made by the privileged - people with a high enough income that they can afford to take time off of work to leave and vote, retired people, people with cars, and voter ID laws are an attempt to further secure that status quo. “There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud,” Posner wrote, “…and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the
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