Opp-Choice: In the United States Government Issued Photo ID Ought not be Required at the Polls

For voting instructions I'll ask voters to refer to http://www.apdaweb.org.... First Contention: If voters are asked to pay for these IDs it will constitute an unconstitutional poll tax. The 24th amendment requires that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote…shall not be denied or abridged by the Unites States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax." The amendment was created to guarantee Americans' most sacred right. It is supposed to ensure that financial matters don't come between the voter and their vote. Even without a formal charge there are personal costs associated with acquiring a GIPID. Simple costs like $22 for a copy of ones birth certificate, travel expenses for reaching the DMV (a considerable barrier in many of our more rural states), and the cost of missed wages weigh most heavily on the poor. This discrimination based purely on financial resources disenfranchises Americans and constitutes a very real though not literal poll tax. Concerning the burdens the law would put on these people, Robert Wilkins, a District Court Judge reviewing the constitutionality of Texas' recently passed GID bill, asked ""How can we ask them to travel over 100 miles to get an ID?" For those in rural Texas without cars, asking them to travel even ten miles is considerably demanding. Voting shouldn't be a chore, voting ought to be a right that our government works hard to protect. "Judges ask tough questions about Texas voter ID law at trial" Chicago Tribune. July 13th 2012. Second Contention: Our safeguards against fraud are already good enough. In most states people are asked to present ID in the form of bills, Medicaid and Medicare cards, social security cards, or paychecks; this has served us well thus far. Voter fraud in the United States is practically non-existent. Less than one case in each state is prosecuted each year, and "from 2002 to 2005 only one person was found guilty of registration fraud. Twenty people were found guilty of voting while ineligible and five people were found guilty of voting more than once." You are statistically more likely to see someone get struck by lighting than see voter fraud. Simply put, the supposed benefit of these laws do not outweigh their significant costs. Lorraine C. Minnite, "An Analysis of Voter Fraud in The United States," Dēmos, Undated, (Adapted from the 2003 report Securing The Vote, by L. Minnite and D. Callahan, with updates.) Third Contention: These laws are not only burdensome to the disenfranchised, they are also unnecessarily burdensome for the states that implement them. In order to make a law requiring GIPID at the polls, ID's have to be made free for the public (otherwise it would constitute a poll tax). States then miss out on the revenue previously generated by charging people for these ID's. Even if the states decide to produce unique voter photo ID cards, they also have to eat the costs of producing these ID's "between 2007 and 2010 Indiana spent more than $10m providing voter IDs." States budgets have already been strained enough in recent years and cannot afford a costly program that provides dubious benefit. Fourth Contention: These laws are discriminatory. Of the 11% of Americans who currently don't have GPID, most are minorities. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said earlier this week that some national studies showed as many as a quarter of African-American voting age adults lacked photo identification compared with 8 percent for whites. All Americans deserve the right to vote, and these laws unfairly target a group that has historically been disenfranchised. "Voting rights, voting wrongs" Economist. July 14th 2012. "Judges ask tough questions about Texas voter ID law at trial" Chicago Tribune. July 13th 2012.