Not that you asked

Last week I wrote about the Arkansas plan for dealing with Obamacare, and why we should keep it. This week I want to concentrate on the new voter ID law. I don't like it, but since it is a Republican idea, and we have a Republican dominated legislature, it will remain the law, and I will just have to live with it.

The law, which reqires people to provide a photo ID before being allowed to vote, was sold to the public as a way to prevent voter fraud, but what it really is, is a way to supress the votes of minorities and the elderly, who tend to vote for Democrats. Besides, the last case of vote fraud was when a candidate tried to buy votes with money and booze. This law will do nothing to prevent that.

The recent election in Craighead County showed some of the flaws in the law, especially concerning absentee voters, that need to be corrected before the primary in May. Fortunately, the number of absentee votes that were questionalble were not enough to change the outcome of the election, but it could be a different story in May.

The main problem is that the State Election Commission and the Secretary of State's Office differ in their interpretation of the law. They need to come to an agreement on the law, and there's three ways that could happen. Two of them are are pretty simple, the other one not so much.

First, it could be as simple as getting a ruling from the Attorney General on how the law should be interpreted. The second would be for the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and the head of the State Election Commission to get together and reach an agreement on how the law should be applied.

The third option is for the Legislature rework the bill to make its intentions more clear. The problem with that is that whatever they come up with may be even more confusing, and hard to apply than the current law is. That increases the chance that one or more of the races may be decided by the courts.

Whatever the outcome, voter ID is the law of the land, and unlike some opponents of Obamacare who just choose to ignore it, it will have to be obeyed. That means that the people that intend to vote absentee, and the people who help them apply for ballots, will have to make the effort to find out just what the law requires of them.

Unfortunately, too many people already consider voting to be so much of a burden that they don't make the effort. A lot of people who vote absentee only do so because other people do all of the legwork for them. Requiring more effort from them to vote means that more of them won't make the effort. Then again, that's the real reason this law was enacted in the first place.