When the House passed the Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006, requiring photo IDs for voters in future federal elections, the ACLU issued a statement saying that, “Less than two months after the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, the House of Representatives has chosen to pass legislation disenfranchising the very citizens the VRA was designed to protect. No eligible citizen should have to pay to vote.”

Similar laws have been passed in at least six states, and the ACLU has either led the attack on all such laws, or lawyers well schooled in ACLU arguments have done so. Several of the laws, including the one in Georgia, have been revised to make the process free for all citizens who claim poverty, to obtain photo IDs from the state the same kind of IDs that citizens who do not drive because of disability, age or other factors, have routinely obtained.

The most recent development in this area of the law was the decision in October by the Supreme Court to reverse the temporary injunction against the Arizona voter ID law. The federal trial court had approved that law. The ever popular Ninth Circuit had reversed, and issued the injunction pending appeal.

The simple truth is that the ACLU supports the right to vote, regardless of whether the voter is an American citizen, or even whether the voter is dead. Powerlineblog turned up the fact that about 79,000 dead people are still carried on the rolls as voters in New York State. About 7,000 of these voted in the last election, mostly in New York City. And those who voted favored the Democrats 4-1.

The fact that there is fraud in American elections, and the fact that the fraudulently cast votes favors the Democrats, goes much further in explaining the position of the ACLU than its pretended reason of “protecting the right to vote.” The ACLU wants fraud in elections, because that means more votes for politicians who support the political goals of the ACLU. That is why the ACLU opposes all efforts at the federal and state level to have voters present photo ID to show they are who they claim to be just as citizens routinely use photo IDs for such tasks as buying groceries and boarding airplanes.