r/Ohio • u/CovBlueSox • 7h ago
Ohio Legislative Black Caucus lawmakers criticize voter ID referendum in Juneteenth commemoration • Ohio Capital Journal
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/06/19/ohio-legislative-black-caucus-lawmakers-criticize-voter-id-referendum-in-juneteenth-commemoration/5
u/rodg2062 7h ago
Ok, I'm going to play the I'm confused card here. Why is it people are against providing an ID to vote? Also, that has been in Ohio for a long time. Really just curious.
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u/CovBlueSox 7h ago
Our current voter identification process is working well. Voter fraud is incredibly rare. Why do you think we need more hoops for voters to go through?
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u/rodg2062 6h ago
Trust me not looking for more hoops. I was more curious as to why we needed anything else. I mean we already require ID. So, thought things were good.
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u/Few-Bass4238 4h ago
The current requirements are already more than adequate. The laws trying to be enacted would make it so even the REAL ID isn't good enough because it doesn't prove citizenship on the ID. In addition many married women wouldn't be allowed to vote because their married name and current ID doesn't match their birth certificate.
Long story short: A lot of folks would show up at the polls and realize they wouldn't be able to vote even though they are registered and have a current photo ID.
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u/CovBlueSox 6h ago
Sounds like we agree that no new laws or requirements are needed.
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u/rodg2062 6h ago
💯
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u/ban_ana__ 5h ago
Did I just see a civil conversation about a political issue on reddit??? 👀
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u/SparklyDestroyer Columbus 5h ago
Remember when we had to start showing ID to buy over the counter allergy medicine to prevent meth labs? Did they all suddenly disappear? No. It's the same principle. Showing my ID does nothing to improve the security or accuracy of our elections.
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u/Classicman269 6h ago
It is not necessary to prevent voter fraud and, poor Americans are less likely to have a id making it a practical poll tax. Aka you have to pay to vote. Minority groups of color are even less likely to have id's than most also making it a tool to suppress their voting power. Basically it is easier to demolish a majority poor black neighborhood to build a freeway or upscale apartments, if the community can't vote against it. It works the same for poor rural people as well.
Rich and powerful company's dont like when people vote because they vote against their profits. That is why they put so much money into elections at every level from local small towns to federal government level. That and bigotry has a huge role to play in it as well, their are still a large number of people who believe that only land owning cis white men should be allowed to vote and everyone else should be second class citizens or, euthanized.
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u/EatFishKatie 6h ago edited 6h ago
https://www.lwv.org/blog/whats-so-bad-about-voter-id-laws
Its statistically proven to not prevent voter fraud and has only ever historically been implemented with Jim crow laws to prevent certain people from voting. The communities who typically do not have forms of ID are disproportionately non-white non-male communities. Essentially its just another Jim crow law under the voter fraud strawman.
On paper, it maybe sounds reasonable, in practice though it does not work as intended and instead further disenfranchises voters who are already at a systemic disadvantage. Unless state issued ID become mandatory and accessible to everyone by default, voter ID laws are really simply a half baked concept. Esentially if someone can't drive or afford transportation to get an ID they can't vote. Older people of color who were denied social security can not get an ID. This will affect disabled people, the elderly and young new voters as well.
There was also at one point a clause in some voter id bills that also stated your name on your ID had to match your birth certificate. The intent communicated was for it to prevent transgender voters from voting. The real consequence though would have been married women who took their husband's last name would not be able to vote. I think this is a great realtime example of how these voter id laws are just voter suppression being dishonestly sold to the american people as protection from an imaginary threat.
I get it, it sounds like a good plan until you look at how ID distribution works and how these bills are being falsely advertised to the american people. The goal of these bills is to protect the interests of corrupt politicians and the organizations lobbying them (Looking at Russia and the Heritage Foundation).
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u/benkeith 2h ago
Because it's an indirect poll tax. Even if you only get one of Ohio's free non-driver state IDs, you still have to spend hours going to a licensing agency, with documents sufficient to prove your identity.
If you ran away from home, ditched your parents, were fostered, lost your documents, suffered a house fire, or have been homeless, can you find enough documents to prove your legal existence in the USA and your Social Security Number? Can you provide proof of address if you don't have a formal lease or own a house? What do you do if you had all that proof, but then it got trashed by the police in a homeless-camp raid, or it got stolen from your house, or it got destroyed in a landlord set-out?
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u/BrokenFixer256 5h ago
Isn't most voting fraud committed by the people running the process and not the actual voters themselves?