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Those who support voter ID laws say
they cut down on voter fraud, but opponents say they target the
poor and minorities.
The nation's high court will
soon decide on whether voters should have to show identification,
or ID, at the polls. That might seem simple: adults need IDs
for all sorts of things, like driving, so why should voting be
any different? But the issue is actually more complicated.
People who want voter ID laws say it will cut down on voter fraud
-- in this case, when people vote who don't have the right to.
Voter fraud can take other forms, like when the vote totals are
"fixed" to give a candidate more votes than he or she
really got. Voter fraud wasn't uncommon in some eras. In the
mid-20th century, Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago had so much
power that many people think he may have controlled election
results, though no one ever proved he did anything wrong. Can
you think of ways that powerful people might be able to influence
election results?
But people who are against voter ID laws say they make it harder
for certain people to vote, including the poor and minorities,
because they are less likely to have these IDs, which cost time
and money to get. They say this is a kind of "poll tax,"
making people pay a fee to vote, a practice from before the civil
rights era that was meant to keep African Americans and poor
whites from voting. It was outlawed in 1964 by the 24th Amendment.
Do you think voter ID laws and poll taxes is a fair comparison?
Why or why not?
  
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