Margot,
The debate is much less about having to show ID than having to show ID and being told you can't vote, even though you are registered and in any other wise eligible. This has happened mostly in the AA community (do you listen to Tom Joyner in the morning? I'd suggest you do, even if by web.) Eighty-some-year-old grandmothers who have been voting for years are suddenly being told either they're not on the rolls (Madea is holding a valid registration that disputes that) or that she doesn't have "enough" ID or that the ID that she has (and has always had) is suddenly not acceptable.
This is only a small part of the problem. There has always been an extremely low incidence of actual voter fraud. Not enough to bother the results of any election, EVER.
The much larger problem is the rampant election fraud that is and has been committed by Republicans for almost two decades. Since the 80's, we've had numerous (and rather spectacular) incidents of votes being "lost", or suddenly appearing in the (R) column out of nowhere, phone line jamming, caging (almost always targeted against the African-American community), electioneering in the form of false stories being planted in neighborhoods by leaflets (with BS like "you'll go to jail if you vote", "if you have parking tickets out, you'll be picked up", ad nauseam), "lost" ballots, "spoiled" ballots in far greater numbers than common sense would dictate -- and each and every one of these tactics has always, always benefited the republicans.
Now, why in the world else would they need to distract us once again with some nonsense mess like voter fraud when we know (and can demonstrate) that the problem is election fraud.
Don't let them change the debate. That's what they always do. I, for one, am sick unto death of the weasling out and misdirection, the typical republican tactic of whining and blaming someone else. Their crocodile tears over a less-than-1% problem don't impress or sway me.
Sumbitches stole the election in 2000 by "forgetting" to pick up ballot boxes in Democratic strongholds. I watched as trucks pulled up to the precinct and boxes upon boxes of ballots were shredded on the spot. I heard the lame-ass excuses from Harris. I saw the tapes on the local TV news where the same thing was going on all across Florida -- and every bit of this BEFORE the recounts began and the circus came to town.
If you weren't in Florida, you didn't get that side of the story, did you. We eye-witnessed the theft of that election, yet outside Florida we were portrayed as fools who couldn't figure out a ballot. My fruit-flavored ass. Many Dem-area ballots weren't even counted the FIRST time. I saw the trucks picking up and shredding ballots before they could be used as evidence with my own damn eyes. So did my other family members, and neighbors. We all walked to the end of our street to watch in horror and anger.
The Republics misdirected and the media were complicit in making Floridians look like fools when we knew goddam well how we had voted. Bitter much? Damn right I am. I, my family, and hundreds of thousands of other Floridians in Democratic strongholds were violated, disenfranchised, and then blamed for what we eye-witnessed to be carefully calculated theft.
The Republics didn't stop with Florida. Every state where the election system was vulnerable, they caged, threatened voters, sought complicity amongst for-sale republican local officials (like Katherine Harris of Florida and Blackwell in Ohio), jammed phone lines when voters sought help or redress, fiddled with DRE results (got caught and no one said a damn thing about it), and on and on and on.
My friend, let's keep this debate where it belongs. Let's not get distracted again whilst they play their little shell games. They have done it so many times now, they're all-up-in-your-face with it and think they can continue with the same old same old.
Not while there's breath in my body.
