There is still local news in Sioux City, South Dakota.
Voters there learned that the wife of their County Supervisor, Jeremy Taylor, a Republican, voted over 50 times for him in each of two elections.
It is Easy Sunday, so I will make quick points.
1. There is a Sioux City newspaper, with a story. The Sioux City metropolitan area is 250,000 people, just a bit larger than Jackson County, Oregon. Voters there learned something important for them to know.
2. There were also stories in the Des Moines newspapers and one in Iowa Starting Line, a public benefit company covering Iowa and seven battleground states. Iowa Starting Line illustrated their story with two photographs of Kim Phuong Taylor wearing a Trump gear. They treated it as a story about Republican election fraud.
3. Democratic readers of this blog may feel a moment's joy that it was a Republican activist doing the fraud. Democrats should temper their emotions. Her scheme was to approach people with limited English in the Vietnamese community, gather their absentee ballots, mark ballots for them, and submit them. It is exactly the kind of thing Trump, Kari Lake, and other election-fraud claimants claim Democrats do. By committing the crime, Kim Phuong Taylor demonstrated that the crime can be committed.
4. Republican election-denialists point to corruption they presume in big cities, not rural areas. No one claims to target Black or new-immigrant voters, only whatever voters just happen to be in the urban centers of Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia. Wink. Their presumption of Democratic fraud is justification for Republican fraud. Remember, the slogan was not "Steal the Election for Trump to End Democracy." It was "Stop the Steal." They were just stealing it back.
5. Democrats should exercise caution in opposing voter ID laws. The GOP de-legitimized elections but also normalized election fraud to balance presumed election fraud. The people most flagrantly defiant and partisan--the ones still flying banners that say "Let's Go, Brandon," "Fxxx Joe Biden" and "Trump Won"--are presumably Republican. They appear to have the emotional intensity to justify taking the criminal risks involved. Net-net, I think strong voter ID laws probably help Democrats. In any case, they may make elections more credible, and that is good for democracy, a worthy goal. So is vigorous prosecution for fraud.
Have to disagree here, Mr. Sage. The recent barrage of voter ID laws is not going to help Democrats, at least according to the ACLU webpage: "Background Voter identification laws are a part of an ongoing strategy to roll back decades of progress on voting rights. Thirty-four states have identification requirements at the polls. Seven states have strict photo ID laws, under which voters must present one of a limited set of forms of government-issued photo ID in order to cast a regular ballot – no exceptions.
Voter ID laws deprive many voters of their right to vote, reduce participation, and stand in direct opposition to our country’s trend of including more Americans in the democratic process. Many Americans do not have one of the forms of identification states acceptable for voting. These voters are disproportionately low-income, racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities. Such voters more frequently have difficulty obtaining ID, because they cannot afford or cannot obtain the underlying documents that are a prerequisite to obtaining government-issued photo ID card."
Totally agree. I don’t understand the argument that one shouldn’t need an ID to vote. You need one to buy alcohol, fly an airplane, drive, rent a hotel room, get background checked for employment, heck, for pretty much everything. Everyone should have an ID and use it to vote. (And here in Oregon we have the motor voter law so your ID is already verified when you receive your mail in ballot) And my Native American tribal ID gets me through TSA, so I am sure it would be fine to use to vote as well. (The tribal ID card is free if one is Native American, and Oregon will provide free ID if one gets an attestation from a homeless provider)