The Atlantic Report: Should the Poor Be Allowed to Vote?

Peter Beinart, who we last saw criticizing Bill Maher for being anti-Islam as well as being anti-Christianity, asks, "Should the Poor Be Allowed to Vote?:"

If Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters succeed in booting C.Y. Leung from power, the city’s unelected chief executive should consider coming to the United States. He might fit in well in the Republican Party.

Beinart is playing the progressive game. He squawks about threats to "democracy" but obviously feels no need to defend it. That is, his assumption that the universal franchise is obviously a positive is left unspoken but yet he wants to posture as if it's under attack. "These Republicans want to steal the vote from poor people!"

It seems clear to me that, if one wants democracy to work, it's necessary to have some restrictions on who gets a say. I've discussed the outward-spiraling nature of democracy before; the nature of the beast is to increase the number of potential voters and the result is to focus on single-issue and, worse, strictly selfish voters.

The Voter ID laws, it appears to me, are about requiring the bare minimum of giving a shit. Beinart tells us about the incredible obstacles that poor people have in the way of getting an ID:

Acquiring that free ID requires showing another form of identification—and those cost money. In the states with voter-ID laws, notes a report by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, “Birth certificates can cost between $8 and $25. Marriage licenses, required for married women whose birth certificates include a maiden name, can cost between $8 and $20. By comparison, the notorious poll tax—outlawed during the civil rights era—cost $10.64 in current dollars.”

...

To make matters worse, roughly half a million people without access to a car live more than 10 miles from the nearest office that regularly issues IDs. And the states that require IDs, which just happen to be mostly in the south, also just happen to have some of the worst public transportation in the country. 

What the Voter ID laws are about is limiting the Democratic practice of rounding up folks and busing them to the polls, voters who would not have bothered had they not been...persuaded in some way. Since all they have to do is give a name, what's to stop that bus from going on to the next poll?

Voter fraud spans both parties but Democratic machine--especially in Chicago--is legendary. What's to say that there hasn't been an apostolic succession of cheating?