At age 96, Dorothy Cooper is the new poster child for what’s wrong with the state’s photo ID voter law. A retired domestic worker living in Chattanooga, she never had any trouble voting even in the Jim Crow era and missed only one election in her entire adult life. But when she went for one of the state’s new free photo IDs last month so she could keep voting, they turned her away. Why? Her maiden name, Dorothy Alexander, is on her birth certificate, and she didn’t have her marriage license. Her story is on the front page of the Chattanooga Times Free Press today.
It’s beginning to dawn on some Republicans that they might have overreached just a tad bit with this photo ID law. Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, is one of the main proponents, and even he is backpedaling. Yesterday, as liberal groups launched a petition drive against the law and the Senate held hearings into whether it’s disenfranchising voters, Ketron introduced a bill to let anyone over the age of 60 vote by absentee ballot without a photo ID.
Ketron said he doesn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want a photo ID. “They make you proud,” he said.
An absentee ballot is the solution that’s been offered Dorothy Cooper. But as she told the Times Free Press’ Ansley Haman, she prefers to actually go to the polls, even though she has to do it in a walker. That’s what makes people proud, not photo IDs. Here’s a woman who has gone to her voting precinct to do her patriotic duty her whole life, even when the segregationist laws were intentionally aimed at preventing it. And now they tell her no.
We imagine the network TV reporters will arrive on Mrs. Cooper’s doorstep sometime soon. If they don’t want to be held up to ridicule around the country, state election officials should go there ahead of time to deliver her photo ID.
Appearing on MSNBC on Monday morning, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Brian Darling tried to advocate on behalf of Republicans’ efforts in several to purge allegedly fraudulent voters from the rolls ahead of the 2012 presidential election.
However, under questioning Darling was unable to cite a single verified instance of actual voter fraud, leading host Chuck Todd to declare that he was “actually proving” Democrats’ contention that the Republican Party’s actions are unnecessary.
“Where is this voter fraud?” Todd asked. “I mean, it’s not this giant…”
“We’ve had recent examples,” Darling said. “…We just had a Michigan Congressman resign… not run for reelection, because… his campaign gathered signatures that couldn’t be validated.”
Todd pointed out that petition gathering is much different from actually voting in a public election. “I mean, that’s a different law there,” he said.
“Yeah, but it’s very hard to catch voter fraud,” Darling replied. “Look at what James O’Keefe did. He walked into D.C., he didn’t have any ID…”
“Did he vote?” Todd asked.
“No, he didn’t vote,” Darling responded. “He didn’t vote, but he asked for a ballot and they were gonna give it to him.”
“Right, but you’re actually proving the point here,” Todd said. “That the fraud didn’t take place because they prevented it.”
O’Keefe, a conservative media prankster whose deceptively edited videos helped convince Congress to pull funding for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN), recently released a new series of videos in an attempt to “prove” Republicans’ claims of a massive voter fraud conspiracy.
The video referenced by Darling shows an unnamed man asking a Washington, D.C. poll worker for Attorney General Eric Holder’s ballot. After a poll worker requests his signature — which, if he’d signed, would have constituted a felony — the man claims he’s forgotten his identification and leaves, having not committed a crime.
Just in case anyone wasn’t aware, voter fraud is an almost entirely imaginary boogeyman invented by Republicans to scare people into allowing them to harass and put up barriers to poor and minority voters so that said voters don’t vote for Democrats.
So if you ever hear anyone piddling their pants over voter fraud, you can pretty safely assume they’re a racist, classist piece of shit and deserve a good solid fist to the pie hole. 
NOT THAT I HAVE OPINIONS ON THE MATTER OR ANYTHING.
