Friday, July 26, 2013

Progress in North Carolina

New clean-election standards and a law protecting unborn children have Democrats’ heads spinning. 

Democrats are terribly upset with Republicans in North Carolina: Having won the state house, the state senate, and the governorship, along with nine of thirteen U.S. House seats in the last election, Republicans in Raleigh are acting like they run the place.

The Republicans’ most controversial piece of legislation is a new voter-identification law, which Democrats are treating as the Second Coming of Jim Crow. Such is the low bar for controversy in the early 21st century: The new law simply requires that voters present a state-issued photo ID such as a driver’s license or the similar ID that the state issues to non-drivers. Other forms of identification not subject to the same documentation and security standards — such as student IDs and work IDs — are not acceptable under the new law. It is really something to watch the Democrats treat a trip to the DMV as an unbearable burden: Under Democratic initiatives, everything from a trip to the doctor’s office to opening a business requires or will require running a bureaucratic gauntlet indistinguishable from a trip to the DMV. Such trips are therefore properly regarded as educational: There is nothing that quite so perfectly attunes one’s senses to the ineptitude and hostility of a Democrat-dominated bureaucracy as a visit to the driver’s-license counter. Little wonder the Democrats object.

The absence of state-issued identification is not a bar to voting only — it marginalizes people from much of modern life, restricting their ability to travel or access financial services. If there are really that many in North Carolina who cannot get a state-issued ID, then the solution is to help them to do so.

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