When people tell me the voter ID laws will not stop most people from voting , I tell them a similar story. The man I know is my ex-husband who, after a stint of irregular housing, had lost or ruined all his ID. He filled out the form and sent the fee to the state of Oklahoma, where he was born. They refused a duplicate birth certificate because he had no photo ID. He could not get that without the birth certificate. The Social Security administration also required photo ID to replace that card. Finally, everybody accepted my ID and my assurances that he is who he says he is, and he was able to replace everything. But it isn't rare and unusual as the right-wing nativists would have you believe. And its goal is clearly to ... More »

This opinion piece has minimal journalistic merit. The author provides mostly quotations from other persons, and what he contributes is mostly invective rather than context or explanation. His racial focus blinds him to the fact that the same situations happen to people from all kinds of backgrounds, not just the groups he favors.