01 January, 2009

Indiana Senate Bill 5 – A Joke

I normally have a national view. Excuse me while I slip for just a bit into Indiana politics.

I stumbled across this post on Masson’s Blog. He points out a new bill being introduced in the General Assembly this session. I hope he will forgive me for quoting his post in its entirety. It’s not very long.

Senator Errington has introduced SB 5 which expands the permissible forms of voter identification.

Included among the permissible forms of identification are: 1) a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, government check, or another government document that shows the name and address of the individual; 2) A driver’s license or state identification card issued by a state other than Indiana; and 3) an affidavit executed by two precinct election officers who are members of different major political parties declaring that they have personal knowledge of the individual and that the individual is the individual whose name appears on the poll list.

Sounds reasonable. It won’t, however, see the light of day in the Republican controlled Senate.

Sounds reasonable? On what planet??? Just because I have a utility bill showing that person A lives at address B doesn’t show that I’m person A! In fact, it doesn’t give any new information at all. From the registration information, we already know that person A lives at address B. That’s why we registered the person there.

Hopefully he’s correct about the bill’s chances, but not because it’s a Republican controlled Senate, but because it’s a truly awful bill.

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