All voters and all votes should be equal.

✔=✔

All voters and all votes should be equal. One person, one vote without value added or subtracted for race, religion, prestige or bank balance is equality. However, if one person votes eight times for his candidate, then my vote has been disenfranchised. On January 1, 2012, a new voter identity election law went into effect in Tennessee. Fourteen more states, including Indiana and Georgia have such laws and 26 are working to create voter identity laws or strengthen existing ones. Support overall has been non-partisan. Moreover, litigation in federal courts has found neither a hardship on citizens nor discrimination. As to South Carolina, one report cited that of the 214,000 registered voters without such ID, all but 7,000 were not living in the state, their ID had expired, had a different name or the person had died. The small percent of registered voters without a picture ID are important and point to the responsibility of voters themselves and to legislators to make reasonable provisions for exceptions. The states’ laws have provisions for people in hospitals and nursing homes, the indigent, religious objectors and voters in need of transportation.

Voting fraud is a serious part of elections. Reasonable efforts need to be taken to insure our elections are excellent at being fair. However, if the Department of Justice continues successfully to block such reform for South Carolina, start mixing the purple dye.

Mary Beth Green
Conservatives Of The Upstate