South Carolina may follow Indiana's lead by approving one of the toughest voter identification measures in the nation. Under a measure passed last week by the South Carolina House, voters will now be required to show a government issued identification before being allowed to vote.
The South Carolina House voted 65-14 to approve the voter identification measure after the chamber's 28 black Democrats staged a walk out in protest. The House refused to accept any of the Democrat's 23 amendments to the bill, including an exemption for elderly voters over the age of 75.
Democrats questioned the need for the bill, repeatedly noting there are no known cases of voter fraud at the polls in South Carolina. Republicans responded that voters could have fraudulently voted without getting caught."It’s analogous to literacy tests, to poll taxes," said NAACP President Lonnie Randolph. "We know what is about."
The November election showed how oppressive voter identification requirements can disenfranchise voters. In Indiana, 12 nuns were turned away from the polls because they didn't have the appropriate identification. Most the nuns did not have driver's licenses, and none of them thought that they would need to bring birth certificates to the polls to be allowed to vote.
The Supreme Court recently endorsed strict voter identification laws in a 6-3 ruling in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board.
Justice Breyer noted in his dissent that obtaining a government-issued photo identification requires a birth certificate and a passport, which he rightly equated to a poll tax. The South Carolina voter identification measure now moves on to the State Senate.
Voter ID wins key approval [The State]
Voters may be required to produce photo ID before casting ballots [The Pickens Sentinel]
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