WaPo Op-Ed: Still Battling Voter Suppression

For complete article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/13/AR2006081300767.html

By Jabari Asim
Monday, August 14, 2006; 12:00 AM

"It was not a difficult walk. It was for a good reason."

Those were the words of Besisa Mbaguna, a Congolese man who last month walked barefoot for two and a half hours to reach his polling place and cast his vote in his country's elections. Considering Congo's troubled history and its oppressive ruling class, it's fair to marvel that people such as Mbaguna got to vote at all. One can also wonder whether those votes will actually count, despite the best efforts of United Nations officials who oversaw the elections.

It's easy to imagine, for instance, that in such a country, Mbaguna could have been stopped short of the polls and turned away for some untenable reason -- say, lack of a photo ID. In Congo, sure, but certainly not in the good ol' U.S. of A.

Or so one would like to think. But the efforts of Republican lawmakers in Georgia, Indiana and, most recently, Missouri seemed aimed at making it as difficult to vote beneath our spacious skies as it is in war-torn Third World nations. Missouri, my home state, became the third member of this notorious trio in June, when Gov. Matt Blunt signed into law a requirement that voters show government-issued photo IDs at the polls starting in November.

Blunt and others say the law will prevent fraud. Their opponents rightly point out that the measure disproportionately affects those who have been disfranchised in the past, such as the poor and racial minorities. Besides, they argue, Missouri hasn't exactly suffered from an epidemic of imposters showing up to vote.