By Hunter Hines
Christian Action League
January 17, 2020
In an interview with OneNewsNow.com, a Christian News Service of the American Family Association, Dr. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League, said the recent ruling by federal Judge Loretta Biggs “sends an unintentional message that is racist itself.”
Biggs, an Obama appointee, nixed North Carolina’s Constitutional Amendment, which passed by 10 points at the ballot box. The new law requires voters to show a photo ID at the polls. Biggs argued that it establishes a form of voter suppression and reflects the state’s “sordid history of racial discrimination.”
Creech told OneNewsNow.com, “Many minorities voted for the [state’s] photo ID constitutional amendment, and they found it [the ruling] quite disparaging, a ruling that implies that they’re not smart enough, they’re not industrious enough, they don’t care enough…to get an ID.”
He added since the law “provided for free IDs and was especially careful to assist minority communities in obtaining them,” that it should be clear that there was no racially motivated intent.
Read the full OneNewsNow.com story: Obama judge nixes ID law, erases will of voters
People on the political Left argue that Voter ID laws are meant to affect people of color disproportionally. Former U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, has characterized Voter ID as “pernicious” racism. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said Voter ID laws are meant to “screw the African-American voter.” Former Vice President Joe Biden has stated that Republican support for Voter ID is about suppressing the minority vote. “It’s what these guys are all about, man. Republicans don’t want working-class people voting,” said Biden.
But these accusations against Voter ID do not hold up to scrutiny.
Public opinion surveys from Gallup, Rasmussen, and even the liberal Washington Post show that Americans favor Voter ID laws as much as by 80 percent. These surveys also demonstrate that approximately the same number of minority voters support Voter ID.
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers studied over 2000 elections in Florida and Michigan, where voters were asked for an ID, but were not required to give one to vote. Researchers concluded that only 0.10 percent and 0.31 percent of the electorate in Florida and Michigan voted without an ID, showing that there’s hardly a microscopic effect by Voter ID on the vote of legal citizens.
A study by researchers from Yale, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania reached similar conclusions about Voter ID laws. Their research was a follow-up to a study from three professors at U.C. San Diego, Michigan State and Bucknell University, which concluded turnout among Hispanic, African-American, and Asian-American voters was lower when a Voter ID was required.
Nevertheless, the follow-up study countered these findings, saying: “Widespread concern that voter identification laws suppress turnout among ethnic and racial minorities has made empirical evaluation of these laws crucial. But problems with administrative records and survey data impede such evaluations. … We show that the results of the paper are a product of data inaccuracies (and) the presented evidence does not support the stated conclusion. When errors are corrected, one can recover positive, negative, or null estimates of the effect of Voter ID laws on turnout, precluding firm conclusions.”
In September of 2005, a federal complaint was filed against Georgia’s Voter Photo ID requirement. The court then ordered a preliminary injunction, which prompted the state to enact a revised Voter Photo ID law in 2006. In 2007 the court determined that the revised law was constitutional. The judge said, “Plaintiffs have failed to prove actual access on the merits of their claim that the 2006 Photo ID Act’s Photo ID requirement unduly burdens the right to vote.”
Creech’s remarks to One NewsNow.com echo those of Jonathan S. Torbin, editor and chief of The Jewish News Syndicate. Torbin writes that the position “minority, poor, and rural voters are less likely to have a driver’s license, passport, or some other picture ID rather than other people. …the notion that blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans or farmers are less capable than anyone else of complying with such a simple regulation is as absurd as it is insulting. …There’s nothing racist about a procedure that can help prevent people who aren’t citizens or aren’t legally registered from committing fraud. What is racist is the notion that African-American and Hispanic voters who don’t have an ID are incapable of getting one.”
“I’m obviously not black, nor some other minority. So I can’t know what it’s like to walk in the skin of a minority person and face the discrimination that some do,” added Rev. Creech. “And I’m sensitive to the many roadblocks to voting that blacks suffered in this country years ago, but I do not believe Voter Photo ID is some revived effort to deny minorities their right to vote today. Instead, I believe Judge Loretta Biggs’ decision, the NAACP and others who argue Voter Photo ID is by nature racist, are smearing the gains of their predecessors – Martin Luther King, Jr. – the people who participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery March, etc.. What good is the Voting Rights Act of 1965 if we can’t ensure its integrity at the ballot box? Chicken Little claims of racism diminish real efforts at equality for all races.”