Voting Things

Indiana passed new legislation this year to keep people like me out of the polls. The new photo ID requirements are confusing and misleading, and specifically disallow ID's from state-run institutions like Purdue or Indiana University. Mostly, the laws were designed to keep blue-staters from Chicago and other big cities from getting to vote for Democrats around here. They may as well have instituted a literacy test.

I figured I was fine - I had a passport already. Passports are the one ID that counts for anything in the US, and since they're federally issued, all states have to acknowledge them. But, lo and behold, when I went to grab it this morning, it was not in either of the places I keep such important documents. In fact, it wasn't anywhere in my dorm room. I tore the place apart, with the slowly dawning realization that without it, I was totally disenfranchised.

I never found it. Looks like I won't get to vote today. I have to say I'm pretty hopping mad. I'm a Purdue University student with everything from a driver's license to a birth certificate, and none of it is sufficient proof of my identity to allow me to vote, thanks to the obscure regulations in this bass-ackwards state. Go Indiana.

Then again, this is a trend with republicans. From Governer Ehrlich's Diebold voting problems to the reports of election challengers and vote suppressors in Ohio and Florida during the last two presidential elections. This has all led to the video the vote project, which I hope documents some or all of this crap.

I worry about the state of our votes with all of this. There are so many ways to defraud people, and it seems many of them are now being employed in one capacity or another. Soon it may escalate to outright fraud, as Ars Technica reported.

Anyway, good luck to all the voters out there.

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