Photo ID for Illinois

Doesn't every vote count? We need photo ID for Illinois. The Supreme Court has ruled Indiana's law is fair.

This could be a signature issue for Barack Obama here in Illinois--"I don't need no stinkin' phony or dead voters" (like JFK did). This could be a Sister Souljah moment for Barack to repudiate the fraudsters at ACORN, his community-organizing allies whom he represented in court and is about his only claim to experience.

OpEd in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, talking about Indiana:

Passing such a law here, something favored 2-to-1 by the Wisconsin electorate, would "disenfranchise tens of thousands," the governor says.

Right. Though, I repeat, Stevens - whom The Times last year called the court's biggest liberal - says asking voters for a little ID would do nothing of the sort. It's not just him. He cites that big James Baker-Jimmy Carter voting reform panel that said officials "need to make sure that the person arriving at a polling site is the same one that is named on the registration list." Everyone else, from Amtrak to check cashers, makes you show ID, and "voting is equally important," they wrote.

This won't sway faith-based opposition to anti-fraud measures. Nor will numbers, though they exist. Indiana's turnout was up 2% in the 2006 elections over the previous midterm voting. Its voter registration is up by 150,000 since January. And a prominent election turnout researcher found last year that the only consistent effect of the law was increased turnout in heavily Democratic counties.

So much for the notion that fighting fraud with voter ID is a Republican plot.

Indiana, whose law is the mirror of one proposed for Wisconsin, has made it as easy as possible to get identification. A state photo ID is free for the poor. Since the needed birth certificate costs money, the law says older people can use their Medicare cards instead or a half-dozen other documents. Veterans' IDs work. Immigration papers, too. Lacking any, a voter simply can swear to a court clerk that he's broke. Critics are reduced to saying the lack of universal bus service is a grievous barrier.

"There's always some incidental costs to voting - you can't come to the polls naked," says Abdul Hakim-Shabazz. An Indianapolis radio talk show host and law professor, he served on the task force that wrote the rules. The remarkable thing, he says, is that for all the talk of disenfranchisement, Indiana has had seven elections since the rules went into effect, and those challenging them have yet to turn up a plaintiff who credibly can say the law stymied him.

All this straining to make anti-cheating measures unabrasive, and critics are unmoved. It makes you start thinking they don't care much about fraud. And, in fact, they deny there's any fraud at all.

Only that Jimmy Carter panel said there was fraud and that it could throw close elections. "Fraud was committed," said a Milwaukee police task force, citing hundreds of instances in the city's disastrous 2004 election. That report explained how Wisconsin's same-day registration and lack of decent ID rules together enable fraud.

The Dems tried to steal the election in Wisconsin, no question.

And I challenge the League of Women Voters to get on board--show us your bipartisan stuff, ladies. Don't you care about integrity at the ballot box?