I came by my cynicism the old fashioned way: I grew up in Chicagoland during the Daley I regime.
Please explain how asking voters to provide identification "tarnishes election results." You're talking like a pettifogging lawyer, asking to measure the unmeasurable. It's similar to demanding some measurement of the deterrence effect of the death penalty: how do you quantify murders not committed? How do you quantify illegal voters who stay home? When the opposition to voter ID comes exclusively from Democrats, particularly big city Democrats, who have for decades been able to do pretty much whatever they wanted in those inner city precincts, I get very suspicious. And their altruistic rhetoric rings hollow.
In his book "Clout," Chicago TV commentator Len O'Connor referred to the "automatic 11." 11 wards which always returned enormous margins for Mayor Daley. Before the polls closed. Before any ballot was "counted," Mayor Daley always had about a 200,000 vote edge. These were wards represented in Congress by Ralph Metcalf (who took the silver medal behind Jesse Owens in the 100 meters in Berlin.) This was a neat, tidy relationship which guaranteed that Mother Theresa couldn't have won.
Ward healers were on the streets all day long, passing out two dollar bills to derelicts to "encourage" them to vote. Certainly nobody was ever rude enough to ask any of these "voters" to identify themselves. And most of the Republican poll watchers had been denied access to the precincts, so there was nobody to watch. And the Board of Election Commissioners made sure no nosy parker ever got a chance to learn how many "voters" were registered at Wrigley Field, because those "public" records could never, ever be consulted or accessed. No banana republic dictator had a better deal than Mayor Daley. He was the first person JFK invited to spend a night in the Lincoln bedroom after he was sworn in. Kennedy knew who had put him in the White House.
It's possible that asking for identification won't eliminate voter fraud. It's possible there's not nearly as much voter fraud as I suspect. So what we'd still have is a minor requirement for voters to prove who they are before they're handed a ballot. Tell me again about "poll taxes" and "disinfranchisement." Just show your ID card (which we will provide at no cost if you can't afford it, which will be useful to you in other situations besides voting) and you're free to vote. And nearly 75% in the WAPO poll agree with that.
