I received my Voter Registration Certificate

I received my voter registration certificate yesterday and for the first time I actually read every word that was printed on it. It's pretty much like last year’s except for the disclaimer on the back, and I'll get to that later, and the district numbers for the representatives.

The disclaimer on the back stared with " federal approval of a photo identification law passed by the Texas Legislature in 2011, a voter must show one of the following forms of photo identification, and it goes on to list them. One exception stuck out like a sore thumb, no it wasn't the concealed handgun license issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety; it was  the one where voters with religious objections to being photographed. How many people are we talking about here? We don't want to disenfranchise those few voters, but we don't seem care about the other 0.5 million voters or so. I can’t remember the last time I pulled out my wallet to show someone my driver’s license as proof of identification.

Despite the blatant lie in today's Tina Dupey's column about 116,000 illegal aliens signing up to vote, voter fraud is not rampant in Texas or anywhere else for that matter. There will always be objections, no matter what the issue but taking proactive steps to prevent voter fraud could have been bipartisan by taking the following steps.

1. Slowly phase in the measure giving everyone a chance to work out the kinks such as affordability, availability and a verification process.
2. Make sure that the goal is to encourage voters not the opposite.
3. Simplify the process and open up more voting places such as the Wal-Marts, the workplace, malls or post office.
4. Extend the hours and then make voting available on Saturdays.
5. We could discuss putting bar codes on the tamper-proof driver's license and allow that information to be tied in with the Social Security database.

I've always been for a National ID card, but my Libertarian friends scream bloody murder about big brothers overreach. They don't mind the Texas ID law, as long as long as we get it in place before this November. It's one of those " if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck.... it's usually a duck." The fact that the Atty. General is looking at this, infuriates the borderline tenthers even more.

I'll be charitable, about half of the registration card is written in Spanish. I wonder how many voters that cannot read a word of English, actually vote? I won't take this into an "English Only" conversation because I think traffic signs written in Spanish and English 200 miles north of the border might save some lives. I think having signs written in many languages in cities like Chicago, and New York are quite helpful. I remember last time I was in Chicago a lot of signs, in some small grocery stores were written in Russian.

I wrote this blog a few days ago, but I'm glad I didn't post on the VA forum because it would have just added to the hostility. I was inspired again when I received my voter-registration card yesterday, and then Tina Dupey's column sealed the deal.I wonder if we will ever mature enough to discuss issues like these ,without people wanting to pour a full gasoline can on top of a small camp fire?