Voter ID: Let’s solve this issue, promote voting

The Clarion-Ledger Editorial, 12/19/8

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann should be commended for pushing two ideas that are overdue: requiring voter identification at the polls and allowing early voting.

Actually, both issues can work to ease voting, reduce long lines and promote people going to the polls, if done correctly.

The voter ID issue has been a divisive one for too long, pitting Republicans who fan the flames of possible fraud against Democrats who – rightly – point to the state’s wrongful use of voting impediments against minorities in the past.

But the issue has devolved past commonsense solutions to merely knee-jerk politics.

It’s time for that foolishness to end – and technology is rapidly making it moot.