Why does the Democratic party believe that voter ID laws suppress minority voting?
What percentage of people living in the US are non citizens and not eligible to vote? Mostly in the single digits in most states.Even if you assumed all non citizens turned out to vote, and they all voted monolithically for the same party, it wouldn't have that much impact on most races in most states.But most non citizens are not trying to vote. If you are here illegally, you are trying hard to keep a very low profile and not attract any attention by any authorities. Why would you ever boldly show up at a voting place?But even if they were, and were all voting monolithically, there aren't enough of them to make a big impact in most elections.You look around and the vast majority, over 90%, of the people you see are fellow citizens that are eligible to vote.So this whole process of needing to register to vote and jump through all these hoops to cast a vote is ridiculous and only weeds out about 2% - 5% of the population on average, maybe 10% or so in a few states with high undocumented populations.When you think about it, it's obvious that all these hoops and speed bumps people need to go through in order to vote are way more about suppressing the vote of poor and minority citizens than about eliminating voter fraud.Most election fraud is committed by corrupt election officials changing vote counts or by hackers hacking into computerized voting machines. Not by people showing up to vote who aren't eligible to vote.
Why do liberals consider voter support ID voter suppression?
Two reasons:It’s a solution to a problem that does not exist. There have been, by now, scores of millions of votes checked, and the number of people who were not eligible or not who they said they were is a mere handful—a very very small fraction of 1 percent. Existing voter registration procedures have done the job perfectly well for years.Voter ID laws are carefully crafted to have the greatest effect on groups who are least likely to vote for Republicans, particularly the poor and people of color, by the choice of which IDs will be accepted, and what you have to do to get them. This is done in concert with other actions such as requiring DMV ID and then closing DMV offices on Saturdays, or in poorer neighborhoods. Polling places are moved to areas hard to reach by public transit. (One town even decided to shut down its public transit, just for election day.)Republicans can see that they are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the public, and they are resorting to these corrupt means to cling to power.