I Am Sure We Will Be Seeing These Civil Rights Suits Any Day Now
I try not to get into the voting rules arguments between Republicans and Democrats because at their heart, most of these are totally political. However, I am fascinated by the claim by Democrats that producing an ID to vote discriminates against blacks, presumably because obtaining such ID puts an undue asymmetric burden on African-Americans vs. whites.
This seems like a crock to me -- I am not sure why obtaining an ID is harder for blacks than whites, though I will observe that the highest profile black man in the country had trouble producing his birth certificate so maybe there is some racial thing here I don't understand.
But if we take the claim at face value, why aren't the TSA and airports being sued by the NAACP? After all, there is an ID entry requirement and if that is discriminatory for voting, isn't it also discriminatory for flying. Why isn't the DMV, or the highway department being sued of its ID requirement? Ditto the federal government, which required ID to enter a federal building.
Update: James Taranto has similar thoughts. He thought of several I missed, including requirements to show ID (part of the I-9 form) in order to get a job.
