There was a lot of talk at the Missouri Democratic Convention about the new voter ID bill. Robin Carnahan made an excellent speech detailing the problems with the proposed bill (she expanded on this in a Huffington Post diary), and Rep. Lacy Clay highlighted Jay Nixon’s strong stance against new voter ID restrictions. Basically, the law would knock up to 240,000 Missourians off the voter rolls to combat a problem for which no evidence exists.
So what do we do about it? The bill is headed for the Missouri Senate, and about the best we can hope for is that a filibuster holds. This would be a good chance for Senator Koster to show he is a true Democrat and is willing to fight for the rights of the elderly, the poor, and minorities who would overwhelmingly be affected by the voter purge. Even in the event of a filibuster, the Republicans will probably break it with a PQ (“moving the previous question”, also known as the nuclear option) as they have done in recent sessions to get their way. So it then becomes paramount that the public be made aware of the problems with this bill before they vote on it in early August.
Fortunately, there’s also an extremely high profile statewide Democratic primary the same day the voter ID law would be placed on the ballot. Three Democrats are running for Attorney General, and if all of them speak often and loudly against the proposed law, in conjunction with other Missouri Democrats with big megaphones, the larger Democratic turnout might be able to overcome it. Jeff Harris is doing just that with a prominent anti-voter ID tool on his website: http://www.electjeffharris.com…
Let’s hope the other Attorney General candidates join him soon in this effort.