Some qualified good news came out of the Supreme Court recently, with a decision that partially upheld Arizona’s 2004 voter identification law. Unfortunately, while the court let stand the portion of Proposition 200 that required voters to provide I.D. in order to vote, it invalidated the I.D. requirement for voter registration.
The bigger news though, from the perspective of those of us who want to ensure fair and transparent elections, is the decision by the American Legislative Exchange Council to withdraw its support for the voter identification laws now under sustained legal assault by the Obama administration. Although the ostensible rationale for ALEC’s narrowed legislative focus is the coordinated left wing crusade against Stand your Ground laws in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, this incident was simply the pretext for an ongoing attempt to legitimize election fraud by Van Jones and his open borders, collectivist allies.
For those of you who are followers of American Rattlesnake, you’ll know that the campaign against ALEC has been a key aspect of the Democratic Party’s election year drive to enliven a voter base whose enthusiasm has waned since 2008. Stretching back to last December, there have been rallies against any effort to prevent parties and voters from engaging in electoral fraud. The insipidity of their arguments is exemplified by the sign held aloft by one of our friends from the MinkWon Center, which graces the top of this page.
The American Spectator has an in-depth exploration of the forces behind these attacks on voter integrity, which include former Obama green jobs ‘czar’ and 9/11 truther Van Jones, as well as Color of Change, a demagogic open borders group that has attempted to accomplish through boycotts and 21st century mau-mauing what can’t be achieved in the legislative arena. These forces are now pressuring businesses that have in the past supported ALEC to sever ties with the organization. Even if knuckling under to leftist intimidation spares some multinational corporations Jackson and Sharpton-style muscling-the controversial stances of the race-based, hard left Congressional Black Caucus do not seem to elicit the same concerns-ALEC’s attempt to spare itself from further harassment will ultimately prove futile.
The reason is that the institutional left is not interested in achieving consensus, especially when they perceive themselves-accurately, in this case-to be winning the public relations battle. The attempt by Arizona’s ignominious congressman Raul Grijalva and his radical colleague Keith Ellison to coerce states into rejecting stand your ground laws is proof that regardless of how many concessions you make to political correctness, its practitioners are never quite satisfied. That’s why ALEC would do well to remember that standing by principle-while unprofitable in the short term-often is the best policy course for organizations that want to be taken seriously as agents for free-market enterprise, limited government, and federalism.
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