Voter ID laws turn out to be success stories

The Heritage Foundation posts a good commentary on the success of the voter ID laws that have been enacted around the country:

Remember the storm that arose on the political left after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Indiana’s voter ID law last April? According to the left, voter ID was a dastardly Republican plot to prevent Democrats from winning elections by suppressing the votes of minorities, particularly African-Americans.

Since the election of Barack Obama, we haven’t heard a word about such claims. On Jan. 14, the federal appeals court in Atlanta upheld Georgia’s voter ID law.

The reasons for the silence about alleged voter suppression is plain. In the first place, numerous academic studies show that voter ID had no effect on the turnout of voters in prior elections. The plaintiffs in every unsuccessful lawsuit filed against such state requirements could not produce a single individual who didn’t either already have an ID or couldn’t easily get one.

I’ve written about voter ID laws before and I’ve said much the same thing: they don’t disenfranchise anyone and they provide a modicum of security for the voting process. Interesting about how the silence from the Left just fell into place. I guess they don’t value the concept of admitting one’s mistakes anymore since George Bush left office. No matter. The voter ID requirement is a good one and it should be enacted in every state to both secure the voting process and bolster the public’s confidence in the process.