Electoral Editorial

Supremes Uphold Bullshit Indiana Law

By Johnny Davis ⋅ April 29, 2008 ⋅ Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court™ of The USA! upheld a law that even first-year political science students agree will disenfranchise a variety of voters from the elderly to immigrants (the legal ones). The Supremes said it was cool for Indiana to require photo I.D. to participate in the electoral process in that state, which it most certainly is not. It is exponentially less cool than the least cool thing you can think of – even less cool than “More than Words” by Extreme.

The insanely-easy-to-understand and well-tested political science that they use to teach first year students how to use political science says that requiring a photo I.D. at a polling station will disenfranchise significant voter populations, and those that it disenfranchises will almost all be poor. Having grown tired of the metaphorical exclamation ‘bullshit’, I tried another couple to describe what that is. Indiana’s voter I.D. law is an eight-foot-deep lagoon of festering hog crap. It’s buckets of warm vomit… None seemed to describe as accurately the legislation as my initial inclination. Indiana’s voter I.D. law is indeed bullshit.

We dispatched the Votelessness arts and sciences department to research the legislation for us and they agreed with our assertion. Indiana’s voter I.D. law is bullshit, indeed.

When reached for comment, the rich people who made and like this law said, “Indiana’s desire to prevent fraud and to inspire voter confidence in the election system are important…” To which we at Votelessness responded, “Cool, so you’re going after Diebold, excuse me, Premier Elections Solutions and ES&S?” An aide then whispered in our ear that the fraud they were talking about was people voting more than once, using different names. Since there isn’t any evidence of anyone trying to commit that type of fraud, we didn’t really get it and continued, “Do you think you will indict Kenneth Blackwell?” Upon the second whispering, we understood what the aide was saying and exclaimed, “That’s bullshit”. We were asked to stop asking things.

Stop asking we did. Now all we’re saying is that it is bullshit that the Supreme Court™ of The USA! upheld such a bullshit piece of legislation as Indiana’s voter I.D. law There is no evidence that anyone has ever even attempted the type of fraud this law ostensibly prevents, but there is ample evidence that such bullshit legal restrictions do disenfranchise significant numbers of voters. Those voters are almost always poor.

BULLSHIT!