Voter ID Laws – How Many People Really Don’t Have Photo IDs?

Anti-ID zealots point to the Brennan Center for Justice of NYU, which sponsored a survey in 2006 to ask people if they had a current photo ID. They’ve been trumpeting the results ever since:

As many as 11 percent of United States citizens – more than 21 million individuals – do not have government-issued photo identification. Eleven percent of the American citizens surveyed responded that they do not have current, unexpired government-issued identification with a photograph, such as a driver’s license or military ID. Using 2000 census calculations of the citizen voting-age population, this translates to more than 21 million American adult citizens nationwide who do not possess valid government photo ID.

But before we get too worried about disenfranchising all those poor ID-less voters, let’s look at the questions they asked:

Post No. 1000!!!

Yes, folks, after 5+ years of cyclically starting and stopping this site, I’ve finally managed to reach the 1000th post. I’ve really enjoyed writing here, as well as at JunkYardBlog, Innocent Bystanders, and Ace of Spades HQ.

This occasion is especially significant, as it also marks the date of the 5000th post at Innocent Bystanders!! Congrats, Michael and Retired Geezer!

So, over the past 5 years, what have been the most popular posts here? I’m glad you asked:

1. Daily Debunking (sort of): The miraculous powers of Preparation H
2. Recovery? Hah! Just Oscillating Unemployment Claims
3. Cold War II: Sino-russian economic ties
4. Obama denies
5. The right to self-defense
6. Car crash hysteria from the Washington Post
7. China’s Secret Nuclear Submarine Base
8. Daily (sort of) Debunking: pronunciation of “primer” and “flaccid”
9. About the Famous Obama Tax Cuts
10. Daily Debunking: Pronunciation of “forte”

There are also a few posts deserving an honorable mention:

1. Paul Anka Transcript: Find out what the guys get and who’s the most important one on the stage!!
2. The Creation Myth: Obama’s 4 Million Jobs & Are we stimulated yet?: These were the first appearances of The Chart, which went viral when I posted it at Innocent Bystanders in May 2009.
3. Q. When is 45 million not 45 million?: This post addressed the inflated and misinterpreted statistics for health insurance. When I reposted it at JunkYardBlog, it got 24,000 hits in one day. I think that’s a personal record – not even The Chart managed to pull in that many hits.

When I started this blog I had unrealistically high hopes that it would be a fact-centered place where reason and right would prevail. As a new blogger with that lofty goal, I was very fascist in the early years, booting people off when they didn’t meet my standards for commenting. I’ve mellowed and gotten a little wiser, I hope, so that now I don’t mind so much if people make illogical or unsupported arguments.

Well, at least I don’t boot them off so quickly.